Every Page is a Story (The Tales of Us)
by Alexandra Lyman
Summary: An ongoing collection of my various Captain Swan themed one shots and drabbles. Ratings on individual chapters will vary, and will run the gamut of canon based to AUs to spec fics and anything else that pops into my head.
1. gimme shelter

**So I decided to finally start an anthology of sorts to hold the shorter one-off fics that until now I've just been posting on my Tumblr. All will be about Emma and Killian in some form, canon-based, AUs, spec fics, and ratings will vary. Most will probably be unconnected. Outtakes and extra scenes from Beyond the Horizon will continue to be posted in the Interlude at Sea series - but other fics are fair game and may show up in here.**

 **This first story is set immediately after the end of Season Five - a little bit of hurt and comfort.**

* * *

 **gimme shelter**

The first night they hadn't so much slept as _collapsed_ , still half-clothed when they fall into the bed and too spent for anything but a chaste kiss before they both give into the fatigue that drags them into a slumber as deep as any sleeping curse and doesn't let go until long after the sun comes up the next morning.

The second night they had made love for hours, slowly, thoroughly, exploring each other from head to toe with hands and mouths until they came together at last in a hot slide of hard against soft. His fingers link with hers against the bedclothes and she peppers his whole face with kisses again, making him smile and laugh as he had done at their reunion. They both laugh this time, as giddy as drunkards with the love that blooms between them. _True love,_ the words keep running through his mind over and over again, _true love, true love, true love,_ the first thought when he wakes the next morning with Emma curled into his side, feet tangled with his and golden hair spread across his chest as the pale light filters in through the fluttering curtains and slants over her sleeping face. _True_ _love_.

The third night was when the nightmares begin.

He is no stranger to bad dreams, the centuries have been long and unkind and there's plenty to pick and choose from when his head hits the pillow. Hades laughs, sending them on a fool's errand to find what he knows isn't there. Only this time there's no escape and Emma is trapped alongside him, the bright flower that will wither and fade without the sun and beating her hands raw and bloody against a locked door that refuses to yield. Pan smirks, forever two steps ahead of him on that cursed isle and dangling what he wants, _needs_ , just beyond his reach. His limbs grow slack and heavy and his blood longs to join with Liam's, he falls to his knees and it spills wetly into the dirt beneath his feet until Neverland claims him at last. The Crocodile snaps his jaws around his hand and takes Milah's heart, sinking back into the oozing muck with it while he's helpless to stop the light in her eyes from fading away, fingers on his cheek growing cold and chest going still as her triumphant bastard of a husband drains her life away in punishment. The king mourns the loss of the _Jewel_ but not his brother, Liam's name is blackened alongside his own for his mutinous crime and his soul condemned to the fiery depths. Liam falls and his grip fails, over and over again he watches him consigned to the flames as he was to the sea. Only there's no shroud covering his face this time, Liam's eyes are wide and terrified at the fate that beckons from the pit of torment and hellfire. Captain Silver flogs him for the first time, he's barely a man and he bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood as the lash bites into his tender flesh while the rest of the crew watches and jeers. In the dreams he doesn't stop, flaying the skin from his back right down to his bones as he sags against the mast and prays for someone, _anyone_ , to deliver him from the mercy of uncaring men.

His father leaves, and he's a small boy forever waiting alone and afraid in the dark.

It's dark when he wakes, shaking and sweating with the sheets in a tangle around him like the slip of a noose on his neck. Only he's not alone anymore and his single hand gropes across the bed until he reaches her. He anchors himself against the curve of her hip, finds his port in the storm between her legs. It's rough, and raw, he wants to be gentle but he can't, he _can't_ , and he sucks marks into her neck and across the tops of her breasts, livid brands of a dirty pirate who can only take and never give. The sweat rolls down his back as he braces himself against the headboard and thrusts madly, sheathing himself inside Emma over and over again until he can't tell where he ends and she begins and he wants this, wants only this, wants to lose himself in her and forget everything except _this_. She welcomes him every time, thighs opening at once when he rolls on top of her and hips tilting up to ease his passage. When he presses his mouth to hers and pleas for forgiveness against her lips she shushes him, when he buries his face in her neck and shudders out his release she cups the back of his head and holds him to her until he softens and slips from her at last.

"Emma, I-"

"I know."

I love you...I want you...I need you.

She knows.

She knows because he's not the only one, some nights it's her who wakes fleeing from the demons that haunt the princess who never was and she seeks him out, stroking him to life before he's fully awake with a grip that has him gasping and arching, eyes flying open and hand fisting in the linens when she climbs onto his lap and sinks down, down, _down._ Her nails rake across his chest and leave burning trails as she rides him at a near gallop but he doesn't protest, the pain is nothing compared to the pleasure and there's nothing else that matters but _this,_ the way her quim fits around him like a velvet glove and the racing of his heart under her palms as she presses them flat to steady herself and her hips stutter and jerk against his.

"Killian, I-"

"I know."

He knows that the nightmares might never leave them fully, they've seen too much, done too much, lost too much to hope for that. The life that awaits them does not promise to be an easy one, not for the savior of the realm and a former pirate with only one hand. But they climb into bed together every night and she rests her head on his shoulder, his fingers playing with her hair and her feet tangling with his under the blanket. They hold their love between them and take shelter in each other until the storm breaks.

It always does, and the sun shines again in the morning.


	2. in this corner

**Boxing AU inspired by a picture Jen posted on Instagram where she was rocking the gloves and leaning against the ropes.**

* * *

 **in this corner**

She's always been sporty.

Growing up in foster care hadn't left Emma Swan much of a choice, she had to be fast to get her share of the food before it was gone, had to learn how to take a hit from older, bigger foster brothers, had to learn how to outrun the bullies at school in hand-me-down sneakers with holes in the soles and broken laces.

It's the same when she grows up - amazing how fast a man can run when confronted with his crimes and the prospect of jail time so she keeps pretty fit just chasing after skips alone, but she hits the gym regularly for weights and swimming and yoga (to stay flexible, she's not really one for zen), but _boxing_ \- now that's really where she finds her niche.

It's not easy, the first couple of places she tries are filled with pumped up dudes who've watched _Rocky_ one too many times and hit _on_ her instead of hitting _at_ her. It's annoying as all hell (seriously, what year is it again?) but she doesn't give up (not after foster care, not after Neal and jail and getting back up after getting knocked down so many times that's she's a boxer long before she ever slips on a pair of gloves) and finally she finds a hole-in-the-wall gym in one of Boston's more dubious neighbourhoods where no one calls her _"sweetheart"_ or suggests going a round or two in bed instead of the ring and she. loves. it.

She loves every second of it, loves the way the sweat just pours off of her after a session with her trainer, loves the lines that develop on her abs as she gains a six-pack for the first time in her life, loves the bruises on her lip and the bloody knuckles and the satisfying _thwack_ whenever she lands a blow.

"Whoever it is you're imagining in your head, Swan, I'm glad it's not me."

She stops pummelling the speed bag and glances over at Killian, watching with his arms folded over his chest and a raised brow.

"Yeah, well, let's keep it that way, shall we?"

Killian Jones owns the place, he's got black hair and blue eyes and an accent that makes her stomach flip ( _not_ that she'd admit it on pain of death) and he treats her just like the men he trains - tough, but fair. He teaches her one-arm pushups and makes her jump rope for what feel like hours, he shows her when to push forward and when to back off, yells at her from the side of the ring to jab and duck, and pours her a shot of tequila at the end of some of the rougher sessions (and himself two).

(he's got a story of his own and like hers it's not pretty, aspiring fighter with dreams of Olympic medals and title fights, on the cusp of stardom and on top of the world when an affair with a married woman had ended when her jealous husband showed up after a match with an axe to grind and a cleaver in the trunk of his car. He'd severed Killian's hand just above the wrist and taken it with him when he'd driven himself and his wife into a tree and instantly killed them both. The firefighters found the hand in the wreckage, but it was too late)

Sometimes he rests his single hand on the curve of her hip when he's correcting her form, with a smirk on his lips that she wipes off with her fist.

(he only smirks harder)

After six months of twice weekly visits that turn into three times, then four, then five (and she doesn't press her ass against him when he stands behind her in the ring and guides her hand with his, _no siree_ ) Killian signs her up for an actual _match_ , with an opponent from another gym and an audience and everything. She wins that bout, but loses the second and stays home for eight days licking her wounds before he shows up at her apartment and pounds on the door, throwing the boxing gloves in her face when she opens it and saying he never took her for a quitter. They spar right in her living room until they wind up fucking on the floor, both sweaty and grappling just as hard as they ever did in the ring and it doesn't matter one whit that he's only got one hand when he can do _that_ with it, making her arch and writhe beneath him until he finally sinks in with his hips positioned square between her legs and the bruise she gave him blooming high on his cheek.

(afterwards, they lie naked and sated on her rug and agree to call it a draw)

Emma wins the next match he arranges, and he wins a grand off a rather greasy bookie he knows named Smee, he bets on her every time, even the bouts they both know ahead of time she has no chance of winning. She asks him why, but he only winks and tells her that he'll never bet against her, no matter what.

(she doesn't know what to do with that)

He starts a woman's class with a picture of her on the flyer he posts in the window and on the gym's Facebook page, snapped leaning against the ropes in a black sports bra with her hair in a messy topknot and sweat glistening everywhere. It proves to be _enormously_ popular, a no-bullshit session where everyone is welcome to come learn how to throw a proper punch, and eventually he has to hire more staff to meet the need. But he still trains _her_ one-on-one, usually late at night when they have the place to themselves and more often that not they wind up sparring together in the middle of the ring with the loser ending up on their back and at the complete mercy of the winner. Even with only one hand he's still a hell of a fighter, so some bouts end with her legs over his shoulders while he roars out his victory and takes her right on the mat, and some end with her thighs straddling his head while she rides his face into oblivion.

(either way, they're both winners)

A year passes, and the success of his new classes and her prize money and his wagers with Smee have built them enough of a nest egg to buy their own place, it's a serious fixer-upper with a postage-stamp yard in a neighbourhood that could be charitably described as _"up and coming,"_ but it's a home.

(it's what she's always wanted)


	3. keep the flame lit

**A little scene set in Neverland, after the Echo Caves.**

* * *

 **keep the flame lit**

He can't help but watch as they disappear into the trees, shoulders hunching forward under the heavy leather he's worn for centuries. Emma, the bright spark that has lit a fire within him where there had been nought but ashes for far too long, and Bae, the boy he had once imagined could be his own.

Even Pan's devious mind could never have devised a more fitting torment.

The prince's arm finds his wife's waist, hope flares between them in the look they share. His own withers, the flame dying out. Bae is the father of her son, the man she still loves, healthy and hale and he has made his intentions clear.

The metal gleams in the firelight when he raises his arm, the sharp point of his hook slams into a coconut with such force that the husk breaks clear in two.

The Neverland jungle is full of tricks to disorient and disarm. One could be standing in full sight of a companion and not hear a single word they uttered, or the quietest of sounds may carry for miles across the island, clear as a bell.

Their voices pierce through his melancholy. Hook tries not to listen, does not want to overhear the private conversation between the reunited lovers, but like the pitiful cries of the Lost Boys it is impossible to tune it out.

"Don't start, Neal."

He hears the rustling of branches and the crunch of leaves under their feet, it sounds as if they are right there on the other side of the fire.

"How can I make it up to you? Just tell me, I'll do _anything_."

He does not want to imagine Bae "making up" with Emma, even though that's what he assumed they were doing when they left the campsite side by side, sharing glances that spoke of a history the rest of them will never be fully privy to.

"Can you give me back the last ten years with my son?"

There is a sharp edge to Emma's voice, a warning beacon in her tone that Bae foolishly does not heed.

"I didn't even _know_ Emma. You can't blame me for that, I wasn't the one who gave him-"

Bae stops, voice dying as neatly as if his throat had been cut as he obviously realizes he had gone too far. Snow White's head jerks in the direction of the voices, and Hook sucks in a breath of air between his teeth.

It goes deathly quiet for a moment and then she finished his sentence, "You weren't the one who gave him _up_. No, that was all on me. I gave our son away and he wound up here. Do you blame _me_?"

Silence again, that stretches too long and he wonders if Bae does blame Emma, as he blamed Milah, blamed him. Families torn asunder, a sad legacy that has passed down through the generations and left too many lost boys and girls. Was he really any better than his bastard of a father? He'd spirited Milah away in the dead of night like a thief and he can't even claim ignorance like Bae pleads to Emma, he knew she was leaving behind more than just a snivelling coward of a husband.

A heavy sigh drifts though the trees and when she speaks it's as if she stands right next to him, though of course she doesn't, "Fine, blame me all you want, but I was _seventeen_ , Neal. A fucking teenager who had _nothing!_ No money, no education, no friends, no family. Just a criminal record, thanks to _you._ How in the hell was I supposed to take care of him? There's no fucking fairy godmothers to wave their magic wands and grant wishes in the real world, you know that and I know that."

Her father looks murderous, hand clenching on the hilt of his sword. Her mother's eyes were wide and even the queen has the grace to look somewhat abashed.

Emma's voice rises and they shouldn't be listening, this is not meant for them, these wounds that she had laid bare before the man she loves, the secrets she is spilling as if a dam has breached. The Echo Caves might have wrenched her deepest confession from her but the well is far from empty.

"I had nothing. Not one damn thing. The only thing I ever had in my life was you, and you _left._ There was no one who even cared if I lived or died, and Henry, he deserved more. He deserved so much more than me. He needed a family."

"Emma...I didn't mean."

"Don't, Neal. Just...don't. It's too late."

She had birthed the lad at seventeen, unwed and alone. He hadn't been much older when Liam had perished in his arms and he too had been left behind. Bae had been even younger, when anger and fear drove him away from what they might have been able to find together.

Snow White buries her face in the prince's shoulder, his eyes close and his arms wrap tight around her. She had said she wanted another child, another chance, she wants what was torn from her.

It's what they all want.

But it's not what they all can have.

When they return Emma's eyes are red and Bae keeps his distance. Hook watches them both, saying nothing when Emma takes his flask without asking and tips back a healthy swig, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Bae draws pictures in the dirt with the tip of his cutlass, still his mother's son despite the years that separate them now.

As the evening waxes and wanes the fire dies down to coals, they bank it for the night so it doesn't burn out completely.

The lone ember in his chest continues to glow, keeping him warm as the nighttime chill settles over the camp. It's died down from the inferno that blazed white-hot when she pulled him to her and set him alight with her kiss, but as they all retire to their separate tents and she gives him the ghost of a smile before she disappears to her makeshift bed, it refuses to extinguish completely.


	4. falling through time

**An _Outlander_ inspired AU, where Emma Swan-Cassidy has managed to time travel from 2015 back to 1785 while in Ireland with her husband Neal. Everyone around her thinks she's an English spy and she's been forced to marry Killian Jones for her own protection. She wants to return to her own time, but she can't deny her attraction to the gallant young lieutenant.**

* * *

 **falling through time (and into your arms)**

The door opened softly on the well oiled hinges and he entered with his hat tucked under his arm and a nervous smile that made Emma want to jump right out of the window _and_ jump his bones at the same time.

A wave of guilt washed over her and she quickly downed the glass of wine she held in a suddenly shaking hand. She was _married_ , for God's sake, the gold ring that Neal had slid on her finger rubbed against the wide spill of her skirts and gleamed darkly in the candlelight. He wasn't here, he wouldn't even be _born_ for another two hundred odd years, but he was still her husband.

 _Wasn't he?_

Her other ring shone bright against her pale skin, the silver too new to have even a single speck of tarnish. _He_ had given it to her, the man standing in front of her in the here and now with his heels pressed together and his hand resting loosely on the hilt of his sword.

His _sword_.

Lieutenant Killian Jones, naval officer, the younger brother of her reluctant protector, Captain Liam Jones, her only friend in the strange waking dream that she was now trapped in.

And now he was her husband.

Her other husband. Her second husband...or could he be considered her first? She had married Neal in 2008 and now she had married Killian in 1785 and _Jesus Fucking Christ_ , she needed a _lot_ more wine.

Time travel. Time travel was _real_. Three weeks ago she had given Neal a kiss goodbye and walked out of the charming little antique-filled Irish B &B where they were staying for their second honeymoon in 2015, and now she was in the same little inn, the same room even, only it was 1785, the furniture was all brand-spanking new and yet old at the same time and it was an entirely different man who was now expecting a kiss from his wife...and more.

His lips had brushed hers briefly in the church at the end of the ceremony, they were a bit dry, but warm. She had been on the verge of fainting, the corset under the borrowed wedding dress was laced so tight that it felt like her ribs were shoved up somewhere around her ears and the shock of the fact that she really was stuck in 1785 and was getting married to a man she barely knew all conspired to make her head swim and her knees buckle out from under her. She'd almost passed right out and it was only his arm sliding quick and firm around her waist that had kept her upright.

The determination in Killian's bright blue eyes when he recited his vows in a steady voice, _I Killian, take thee, Emma_... _love, honour, cherish_ , the sight of him in his full dress uniform when she had made her entrance into the church and saw him waiting for her at the altar, looking like he had just stepped right out of a painting in a museum with the polished boots, gold braid and the gleaming sword, Emma told herself that neither had anything to do with her sudden swoon.

Killian pulled off his white gloves and laid them carefully aside atop the little writing desk, kneeling down on the broad plank floor and clasping her shaking hands in his. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, the one that he would expect to share with her. Liam had been very clear, the marriage needed to be consummated to be legal. If she wasn't Killian's wife then that bastard Gold could still arrest her. That reptilian little man thought, heck, _everyone_ thought (Liam included) that she was some kind of spy.

Except Killian. She hadn't told him the truth - how could she? - but she had sworn to him before the wedding that she wasn't a spy and he said he believed her. Just before he told her with a rueful smile and a scratch behind his ear that he was still a virgin, and added at her dumbstruck croak of _"Seriously?"_ "Aye, well, at least one of us will know what to do, lass."

Screw wine, what she really needed was tequila and lots of it.

"Emma," he said, looking down at their joined hands, "I know this wasn't what you wanted, but I promise you that no one, not Gold nor any of his men will come near you now. I am your husband and I will honour you and keep my vows whether we lie together or not. If you wish for me to sleep on the floor tonight I will, and every night after until you choose to invite me into your bed. I am a patient man, I can wait."

She was a bit shocked and tried to tell herself that the sudden lurch she felt under the dress wasn't disappointment at his rather gallant offer, "But your brother said-"

"Sod what Liam said," Killian interrupted, "A married man need not tell his brother everything. What happens, or does not happen in this room is between you and me. No one else. But I will ask if you would be so kind as to spare me a pillow? The floor is rather hard."

Emma chewed on her lip, wondering suddenly if he was saying it because he didn't actually want to sleep with her. Maybe he was still a virgin because he just wasn't interested in sex or was secretly gay or something. Which she wouldn't ordinarily ask a guy, but they were married now and she needed to know if he was sexually attracted to her or not. She tried to phrase it as delicately as she could, "But do you want to, uh, lie with me? Eventually?"

A crimson flush rose in his face and neck and the hands holding hers tightened. But Killian kept his gaze locked on hers and nodded slowly, "If I am being honest, aye. Right since the night you fell into my arms, kneed me right in the stones and spewed such colourful profanity at my brother that you made a group of common sailors cover their ears like cloistered nuns. I thought Liam was going to have an apoplexy and all I could think was that this strange lass with the sharpest tongue in all of Eire was the most beautiful woman I had even seen, with your hair all like a cloud of spun gold on your shoulders and your skin turned silver in the moonlight. I thought you were one of the Fair Folk at first, come to rebuke us for disturbing you from your abode and I was ready to fall on my knees and beg for your pardon."

"That's quite the pickup line, sailor," she laughed, trying to pretend that the warmth currently spreading under her skin and tingling pleasantly in her breasts and between her legs was only from the wine. He looked a bit confused by the unfamiliar phrase, but he smiled back and maybe it was the alcohol or the feel of his callused thumbs gently stroking the backs of her hands or her own loneliness as a stranger in a strange land, but she really didn't want to sleep alone tonight. She could deal with her guilt about Neal in the morning but for now all she could see was the man in front of her with his dark hair combed neatly back into the cutest little ponytail and longing on his handsome face.

"Killian...come to bed with me."

His adam's apple bobbed in his throat and his jaw went tight as he swallowed hard, "Emma, are you sure?"

He had said he was a gentleman when they met and even though his knuckles were white and the hands that held hers shook he still waited, holding himself back until she nodded again and whispered, "Yes."

In the flickering candlelight she stood up and he scrambled quickly to his feet as well. Killian had to help her out of the dress, she wasn't used to the laces and all the layers of different underthings and she really, _really_ missed zippers. The borrowed finery was stiff and hot and she breathed a sigh of relief when the heavy satin overgown finally came off and another when the corset-slash-torture device was unhooked, leaving her in the thin nightgown-looking thing that a lady was supposed to wear underneath. Her inner foster kid snorted at the mere thought of being a lady (while another part that had never quite let go of the princess fantasy was still feeling like Cinderella at the ball) and she was so preoccupied with not ripping or damaging any of the fancy clothes that she didn't realize the effect she was having on her new husband until she felt a pair of large hands circle her waist and she was unceremoniously yanked forward. Emma had the briefest glimpse of his face, mouth open and eyes dark with something that made her nipples tighten to hard peaks under the linen, and then his lips were on hers and it was nothing like the chaste brush in the church. It was a kiss that made her melt against him and her toes curl in the satin slippers she still wore, sparks zinging under her skin. Her fingers found the collar of his navy jacket, holding him flush against her and she felt his hands slide down and cup her ass, squeezing somewhat roughly. She let out a slight squeak at that and in an instant the hands were gone and he was suddenly holding her away from him at arm's length.

"My apologies, I didn't mean to be so forward."

She rolled her eyes at that, if they were going to have sex then he would have to get a lot more forward than playing a bit of grab ass, "I'm fine."

He didn't look convinced but she stepped back into his embrace and started to push the jacket off his shoulders. Killian took the hint and pulled his arms out of one sleeve and then the other. Underneath he seemed to be wearing as many layers as she was now forced to don, a white vest over a shirt with some kind of cravat tucked into his collar. Didn't people get _hot_ in the past? How could they all stand to wear so many clothes, all the time? She mused on it while she worked the long row of small buttons on his vest. He stood as still as a statue, watching her undress him with his hands at his sides. He didn't move until he was bare from the waist up and she laid her hands on his chest, feeling the coarse hair and the racing heartbeat under her palms. She traced the hard muscles, he was a lean man but there was great strength in the flex of his broad shoulders and the long lines of his arms. He could wield a sword with ease and he had lifted her up as if she weighed nothing on that night when she had fallen through time and landed on top of him. The skin was surprisingly smooth but dusted with scars, jagged white lines that reminded her of just how dangerous this time was. If she hadn't run into Killian and his brother Liam when she first arrived...a violent shiver ran through her at the thought of what might have happened.

"Are you cold?" he asked, rubbing her upper arms briefly before moving to the fireplace in the corner of the room. In the future the stone was stained dark from centuries of soot and the flue had been bricked up, it was non-functioning and was just part of the B&B's old-fashioned and quaint decor. Now it was the only source of heat, piled high with logs and Killian got out a striker and flint to get it started. They didn't even have fucking matches in this time and she needed to find her way back to the stones and return to the world with indoor plumbing and electricity and everything she was used to, everything she took for granted and everything she missed so much.

Everything…

When he got the fire lit after a few false starts he let out a small triumphant noise that made her smile. He straightened up from the hearth, turned to face her again and whatever he was about to say died on his lips. She'd taken off the last layer and was standing completely nude, fighting the urge to cover her breasts with her sweaty palms and pushing away the memories of the other man she had shared this room with. His eyes slowly travelled down the length of her body as his mouth opened and closed without any sound coming out. Emma remembered that there was no Playboy or porno movies yet and wondered if she was the first woman he had ever actually seen naked. He certainly seemed rather flustered by the view, and there was a bulge in the front of his pants that was visible even in the dim light. A rather large bulge too.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, "Bloody hell, I knew you were a bold one lass, but-"

"But what?" she challenged, feeling self-conscious and ready to jump out of the window again, "Don't you like what you see?"

"I thought...the men said that a lady leaves her shift on for the bedding, I didn't expect to see so... _much_."

Killian sounded like a teenage boy, his voice much higher than normal and she tried not to laugh, "I can put the shift back on if you'd prefer."

"No!" he yelped, eyes glued to her breasts, "You are glorious, Emma."

She'd never been called that before. Pretty or cute, maybe, but glorious? Men didn't talk like that in the future, or none she had ever met in bars and clubs did.

"What else did the men tell you?" she asked, curious. If he hadn't expected his own wife to get naked on their wedding night, then what else did he think was or wasn't going to happen?

He seemed to have trouble focusing, she had to repeat the question while he continued to gawk at her like she was a supermodel or a movie star. It was...nice. And kind of a turn on.

"Oh! Err, most of it wasn't fit for a lady's ears-"

"I'm not very ladylike, Killian. Lay it on me."

He dropped his gaze then, staring at the floor, "Well, they said that I should not go to my marriage bed drunk, as a drunken man can't always..." he gestured vaguely to the front of his trousers for a brief moment as his voice trailed off.

"Get it up?" she finished, "Yeah, that's true. I don't think we'll have that problem though."

Even the tips of his ears were crimson and it was completely adorable.

"I, uh, abstained from any spirits all day just to be sure," he mumbled, "They also said that you might fight me at first but I needed to be firm and to hold you down if I had to. To which I reminded them that I've seen you fight, and you've already bloodied my nose once. If I tried to force you I think you'd have no qualms in gelding me with that knife you hide under your pillow."

She wasn't quite sure what "gelding" meant, but again she was relieved that she was now married to Killian and not one of the leering, sexist Neanderthals on Liam Jones's crew. They were the reason why she had filched the knife days ago and carried it with her, but she felt a jolt of surprise that Killian knew about it and had apparently not told his brother. Emma wondered if he also knew about the bits of food she'd been squirrelling away for when she finally got the chance to escape. She'd run away from enough foster homes in her youth to know that she'd have to seize the opportunity whenever it struck and was not going to try to travel across half of Ireland unprepared.

"Yeah, no holding down or you'll lose a very delicate part of your anatomy, buster," she glared, crossing her arms over her chest, "Any other words of wisdom?"

Killian shuffled his feet slightly, "Well, my brother said that a good wife suffers her husband's attentions without complaint, but it's unpleasant and offends the feminine sensibilities so I should endeavour to finish quickly."

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that sage piece of advice, "No offense to your brother, but that's a crock of shit. Seriously, I hope Liam never gets married if that's what he thinks women want."

The floorboards creaked under her feet as she moved towards him. Killian glanced up again, looking both shocked and hopeful by her words. Emma hooked a finger in the waistband of his pants and pulled him towards her, he let out a tiny groan when her bare breasts made contact with his equally bare chest and _damn_ if the sound didn't go straight between her legs. When she slid her hand over the outline of his erection and squeezed just a little bit his whole body jerked and his eyes went wide with surprise.

"Sod Liam then," Killian ground out, hips driving against her hand.

Her arms went around his neck and their lips met, a hot slide of tongues and teeth and the floor suddenly dropped out from under her. Killian had lifted her clear off her feet and was walking towards the bed. He settled her carefully against the thick pile of quilts and she watched as he hurriedly toed off his boots and shoved his pants over his hips. A trail of dark hair ran down his abdomen and when she saw where it led it was her turn for her eyes to go wide and a blush to rise under her skin. How could this man possibly be a virgin?

A grin split his face when he saw where she was looking, "Does it please you then, Mistress Jones?"

Now he was the one who was growing bold, climbing onto the bed with her and settling between her legs as easily as if they'd already done this a thousand times. Foreplay be damned, she was so ready that it was almost embarrassing and just as she was about to wrap her hand around him and guide him inside his face suddenly went serious again. The smile faded and she wanted to pull his head down to hers and kiss him until it returned.

"If I do anything that I shouldn't, please tell me Emma. If I'm too rough or I cause you any distress-"

"You won't," she interrupted, "Killian, just...trust me?"

It was what he had said to her the night they met. _Trust me lass, I won't hurt you._ He hadn't then, and he wouldn't now.

Their hips aligned and he slid in with a hoarse exclamation in Irish that she didn't understand but the sentiment was clear enough. Her eyes closed as he buried his face in her neck and his hands groped for hers. Their fingers laced together against the mattress, holding each other tight as he ignored everything his brother and the other men had said. Killian went slow and careful and it drove her absolutely crazy, he was gentle until she bit down on his shoulder and dug her nails into his back. Like the touch of a spur to a horse it made him buck, back arching and forcing him that tiny bit deeper inside. She rolled up to meet him and his mouth covered hers, crashing down as his thrusts found a new rhythm that had her crying out with pleasure.

"Emma, I _can't_ , I can't stop love."

"Don't you fucking dare stop now, don't stop!"

The bed squeaked under them as she locked her legs, muttering dirty things in his ear that were probably scandalizing the hell out of him but he didn't stop until long after the candles on the mantle burned down into pools of wax and finally snuffed out.

Killian held her in the dark after their third time (or was it the fourth? he was certainly making up for lost time _now_ ) with an arm draped over her waist, lying behind her on the bed with his chest against her back and his nose pressed to her hair. He spoke softly, pulling her that tiny little bit closer so there wasn't an inch of space left between them.

"Don't be afraid, there's the two of us now."

 _Nothing_ about the last three weeks made sense. She had fallen down the rabbit hole and woken up in a history book come to life, she had gone completely insane or was asleep and it was all a dream. The only thing that seemed remotely real, the only one that made her feel like she wasn't trapped in some crazy delusion, was _him._

Every night she had laid awake and thought of all the things she missed from her own time. It was a long list, Starbucks, email, Chinese food, her yellow Bug,

 _Neal_

Now she touched her thumb to the silver ring on her right hand and wondered how she could possibly go back and spend the rest of her life lying awake and missing the one thing that _had_ to remain in the past.

 _Killian_


	5. forever home

**This was written for the prompt "Emma and Hook and a Newfoundland puppy in the snow." Timeline-wise it takes place during the 6 weeks that passed by offscreen halfway through season 4.**

* * *

 **forever home**

"This is payback."

She stomped her feet and blew on her hands, red and chapped from the wind. She would have sworn that her gloves had been in the pockets of her coat, but when they reached the park and she went to pull them on, all she found was a few wadded up tissues and a Chapstick without the cap.

"Hmm?" Killian turned and looked back at her, "Payback for what, Swan?"

Emma yanked her hat a little further down on her ears and glared, "Everything."

At the foot of the hill Henry was running through the snow, arms outstretched and laughing. He fell to his back and a ball of black and white fur jumped on his chest and started licking all over his face.

Five days ago she had finally moved into her own place, a two bedroom cottage with wide pine floors and gingerbread trim on the eaves, with a fine view of the harbour through the master bedroom window. Two days after that, Regina had shown up with what she claimed was a housewarming present, but Emma knew was one thing and one thing only.

Payback.

In puppy form.

...

Henry had immediately fallen in love with the dog, rolling around with it on the floor while she felt the smile freeze on her face and met Regina's smug grin.

"Seriously?"

"Well, he's always wanted a dog. Unfortunately we could never have one in the house, allergies, you understand. But now that you have this _charming_ little abode, no pun intended, I thought that it was the perfect time to give our son what he's always wanted."

Emma bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. Henry was sitting cross-legged with the puppy in his lap, the little face looking up at him with tongue poking out and tail wagging so hard the entire body was shaking.

Killian knelt down next to them. He reached out and chucked his long fingers under the puppy's chin, "He's a handsome wee beast, lad."

Henry looked up and the hope in his voice tugged at her heartstrings, "Mom? We're going to keep him, right?"

The three faces were all turned to her and visions of puddles on her new pine floors and chewed shoes were no match for her son's beseeching look and her pirate's grin and the puppy's tiny lolling pink tongue.

"Well," she said weakly, rubbing a hand over her forehead, "I guess-"

Henry leapt to his feet and wrapped her in a one-armed hug with the bundle of fur in his hand.

Regina jerked her thumb over her shoulder, "There's a bag of dog food and all the other necessities in my car."

He thrust the puppy into Emma's arms and went to get it with a hurried, "Thanks Mom," and kiss to Regina's cheek.

She had to admit the fur was very soft and the puppy was beyond adorable with it's bright blue eyes and fluffy black and white coat. But she had never owned a pet before, not even a damned goldfish. She worked 12 hour shifts as the sheriff of a town full of fairytale characters where hardly a week went by without some type of magical crisis or new villain making an appearance (who was next, freaking _Voldemort?_ That black-haired kid with the glasses in Henry's class and his redhead friend had her doing a double take when she had picked Henry up from school the other day) how was she supposed to take care of a dog?

Henry came racing back in, laden down with Petsmart bags that he promptly dropped on the living room floor and began emptying. A food bowl, a collar and leash, several squeaky toys. She set the puppy back down on the floor and it went running over, almost tripping over it's comically oversized paws and sinking it's teeth into the rubber newspaper Henry was holding out to it.

Regina was halfway out the door, throwing a wave over her shoulder.

"Uh, Regina? What _kind_ of dog is this?"

Emma eyed the large paws suspiciously and looked at the woman who might no longer be evil, but was certainly up to _something._

Regina paused, her red gloved hand resting on the door jam, "It's a Landseer."

She felt her forehead wrinkle in confusion, "A what?"

The lips curved up in a smirk, "A Landseer...Newfoundland."

"SERIOUSLY?!"

Newfoundland dogs were generally said to be sweet, gentle, friendly, good with kids, great family pets...who weighed over a hundred and fifty pounds when full grown. Her jaw had dropped when she had read that little tidbit online, looking up over the laptop screen to where Henry was fastening the little collar around the puppy's neck while Killian sat on the couch, reading the back of a box of Milk Bones with a quizzical look on his face.

She took it back. Regina was definitely still evil.

That first night she had been woken up at three in the morning by the puppy whining and scratching at the door of his crate, needing to go out. Neither Killian nor Henry had moved at the sound, and she'd thrown on a bathrobe and shoved her bare feet into her boots, cursing oblivious men and tiny puppy bladders, carrying the dog outside into the freezing dark and waiting impatiently while it sniffed and pawed at the snow covering the lawn for what felt like an hour before finally picking a spot to pee.

She climbed back into bed and wrapped herself around her pirate, who woke up with a muffled oath when her icy feet pressed against his legs and her equally cold hands burrowed under his T-shirt in search of warmth.

"Bloody _hell_ , Swan!" he gasped, "Bad form, love, to rouse a man in such a fashion."

"Yeah, well, go yell at Regina."

He was better than a hot water bottle or electric blanket, heat radiating off him and she tucked herself into his side and nosed at his neck while he squirmed and protested. Her hand found the place where he was warmest, and he stopped trying to pry her off and rolled her onto her back instead.

His breath was hot in her ear, "But since I'm _up_ now," he murmured, his hand sliding under her tank top and his hips rocking into her.

Soon, she felt like she was on _fire,_ sweat trickling between her breasts as her hands clawed at his back while he whispered filthy things and sucked hard on her neck.

The next morning she had to wear a turtleneck to cover the hickey and when her back was turned and Henry was in the shower the puppy got hold of a brown suede Kenneth Cole boot (that had been bought full price, no less, not on sale) and she swore actual, literal steam came out of her ears.

Killian took one look at her face and scooped the puppy up, taking him outside and she could hear him talking to the furball as he went, "Now mate, I may be new to this realm but I have learned a few things, among them that the women here have very strong attachments to their footwear and you'd best be advised not to cut your teeth on your mistress's boots."

Emma watched from the window while her new Tassimo (at least her father had given her a decent housewarming gift) made a cup of hot chocolate. The puppy was walking behind Killian while he strode around the yard, hand and hook behind his back as he continued to impart whatever other wisdom he was bestowing to the little dog, who kept cocking his furry head as if he was really listening.

Well, it was Storybrooke. He probably _was_.

...

At the park Henry ran in circles with the dog chasing along behind.

"If this is the form Her Majesty's vengeance takes these days, it's rather mild, love," Killian pointed out.

"It's payback, and that's easy for you to say, since Nameless down there didn't chew up _your_ boots."

Henry had not settled on a name for the dog yet, considering and rejecting several options. Comic books had been involved, Google has been involved, but he couldn't decide.

Killian's hand grabbed hers and gave it a squeeze, "Well, that's because I put _my_ boots away in the wardrobe."

He grinned at her outraged look and lifted her hand to his lips, brushing a kiss over her knuckles. His cheeks were red with cold, but he was bareheaded and still wearing his shirt open at the throat with a generous sliver of chest peeking through, the crazy pirate.

A snowball exploded against the back of his head, soaking his hair and over his shoulder Emma saw Henry raise his arms over his head while he yelled out, "Bullseye!" The dog barked and when Killian turned and started chasing after the both of them she started laughing so hard she had to lean over and brace her hands on her sides.

"Do you know what keelhauling means, lad?" Killian yelled.

"Gonna make me walk the plank, pirate?" Henry taunted, another snowball in his hands.

Her son was throwing snowballs at _Captain Hook_ , who was using a stick to knock them aside while he continued to make various nautical-themed threats, and her sides hurt from laughing so hard.

Emma fell to the ground, hugging herself as she kept giggling, ( _giggling!_ When was the last time she did _that_?) and a small furry body landed on her chest, yipping and barking and jumping up and down. She looked up at the bright blue eyes and forgot about the ruined boot.

Well, she did have a bit of a weakness for cute males with blue eyes. Human _and_ canine, apparently.

When she came home from her shift at the station that night it was late, after midnight. The lights were off, but as she stepped into the front hall and slid off her boots (Nine West and promptly put away in the closet and away from wayward puppy teeth) she could hear the TV and see the faint bluish glow spilling into the hall from the living room.

 _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ was playing on Netflix, and her three boys were all sprawled out, asleep. Killian was in the armchair, head thrown back and soft snores escaping him. Henry was stretched out on the couch, all arms and legs with a half empty bowl of popcorn balanced precariously next to him. The dog was curled up on the throw rug in front of the fireplace, and as she took a step forward the black-and-white head came up and he let out a little yip, trotting over and jumping up, pawing at her leg with his tail wagging happily.

How many nights had she walked into her apartment and found it silent and still and _empty_? Every night, for weeks, months, _years_. Now she had her son, and her boyfriend (Captain freaking Hook was her _boyfriend_ ) and even a dog.

Killian opened one eye and scratched absently at his stomach with his hook, T-shirt riding up to reveal dark hair and toned abs that had her own belly doing a little flip, "Welcome home, love," he yawned.

She leaned down and scratched the puppy's head with a smile. _Welcome home_.

In the morning Henry declared that he'd named the puppy Sirius, and oh, by the way, did she notice the orange cat two doors down who looked exactly like Hermione's Crookshanks from the movie? The owner was a girl in his class, wasn't that a funny coincidence?

(she made a mental note to keep an eye on that black-haired kid and his redhead friend)


	6. pickup lines

**The standard "strangers meeting in a bar and hooking up" AU.**

* * *

 **pickup lines**

He shoved a leg in between hers, feeling her thighs grip and squeeze and _fuck_ , all he could think about was having those long legs wrapped around his hips, with the red heels still on and the matching red lipstick and nothing else.

But since they were currently pressed against the brick wall behind the bar, thankfully _upwind_ of the dumpster, he would have to make do.

A man walked into a bar...

It wasn't the opening to a joke, it was what Killian had literally done an hour ago. A _proper_ bar, not a trendy gastropub, or a place that could be described on Yelp with the words "fusion," or heaven forbid, "hipster," but a corner bar with a neon sign in the window that just said "COLD BEER" and a working jukebox, a pool table older than he was with worn felt and a knockout blonde in a black skirt, semi-sheer black blouse (lace pushup bra on clear display underneath, well _hello_ ) and dark red stilettos that matched her dark red lipstick.

A knockout blonde who was sitting _alone_.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

It slipped out before he could even stop to think, to plan, to come up with anything slightly _less_ cliched. But she didn't even look at him, she just waved over the bartender and ordered a beer with a tequila chaser, jerking her thumb over her shoulder with a clipped, "It's on this guy."

He sat down catty-corner from her and added his own drink to the tab, "This guy has a name, love."

Green eyes flicked towards him briefly as long fingers toyed with the neck of the beer bottle in a manner that had him wishing he'd worn slightly looser jeans. The red lips curved in the hint of a smile.

"Yeah, well, beer and tequila first, names after."

She downed the shot, licked the salt with a dart of her pink tongue that had him shifting again in his seat, and stuck out her hand, "I'm Emma."

"Killian Jones, at your service."

She tasted like tequila, and the cigarette they'd shared - the whole pretext for going outside together was to have a smoke and they'd each taken exactly one drag before Emma had dropped the butt on the pavement and ground it out with her stiletto heel, and he'd walked her back into the wall and kissed her, the kind of needy, desperate kiss only two strangers who met in a dive bar could share. Her hands went under his leather jacket, yanking the hem of his shirt out of his jeans and red nails scratching across his back, and he shoved his thigh upwards, right between her legs as he hitched up her skirt and discovered the eighth wonder of the world underneath, lace-topped thigh high stockings.

He pulled back with a muttered, _"Fuck,"_ and saw amusement flash in her eyes.

"They weren't for you, you know, they were for the asshole who stood me up tonight."

 _"Bloody,"_ kiss, _"Fucking,"_ grope, kiss again, _"Fool."_

Emma ground down on his leg and laughed, throwing her head back and revealing the long column of her pale throat, all the better for him to run his tongue along it, "Well, that fool was your unintentional wingman tonight, sailor."

Fuck, they were practically in _public,_ for Christ's sake, he could hear people on the sidewalk just a few feet away, walking and talking and anyone could come out of the bar's back door at any second, and the wind shifted and he could smell the dumpster now and it was fucking _rank_ , but he couldn't bring himself to care about any of that when she was fumbling with his zipper and her small hand was reaching into his jeans to wrap around him where he was hard and aching and had been since before she'd even tipped back the tequila shot and fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

Not to be outdone he undid the top two buttons of her blouse and pulled the lace cup of her bra aside, swiping his thumb over her firm nipple and giving it a quick pinch, swallowing her gasp and probably the last of her lipstick as well.

"Please," she whispered against his lips, "Please tell me you have a condom stashed in your wallet because you totally look like the kind of guy that always has a condom in his wallet."

He wasn't sure if he should be annoyed by that because he did have one in his wallet and he usually did have one in his wallet and he wanted to ask her what kind of guy she thought he was, even though he knew he was exactly the kind of guy she thought he was, the kind that always carried condoms and beelined for gorgeous blondes in shitty bars, so he fished it out and rolled it on quickly, spitting out the corner of foil packaging that he tore off with his teeth with his eyes never leaving hers.

"Wait."

She raised an eyebrow when he shrugged off his jacket, but the brick wall was rough and her blouse was practically translucent, her back would get scraped and he didn't want that so he draped the leather over her shoulders before hefting her up in his arms. Understanding dawned in her eyes before they quickly slammed shut, he fumbled between her legs for a moment, shoving aside the damp lace _(seriously, the man who stood up this goddess was the world's biggest wanker)_ before cupping a handful of soft arse and sliding home in one stroke.

A stiletto dug into the back of his leg as her ankles locked behind him, he imagined the flash of red against his dark jeans and started to move. It was fast, short, sharp thrusts that echoed quietly with the slap of skin on skin and he wasn't going to last very long even if they did have the time, which they didn't, a loud, drunken conversation came floating from the sidewalk around the corner way too close for comfort. Emma gripped his shoulders, thighs wrapped tight around his hips and wet heaven around his cock as she muttered into his ear, " _Hurry_."

A man walked into a bar. The words ran in circles through his mind, but it wasn't the opening to a joke. He bought a beautiful blonde a drink, and then they went outside and fucked against a brick wall. He came hard, groaning into the crook of her neck even as he cursed himself because he knew she hadn't yet, and he might be the type of guy who always carried a condom in his wallet but he was a fucking gentleman. The voices drifted away again and he went down on his knees, intent on finishing her off with his mouth. She tried to close her thighs, protesting weakly that she was fine and he didn't have to worry about her.

"I don't usually, you know, anyway..."

"Emma," he interrupted, looking up at her with a wink, "Seriously, whoever this guy is, he's a selfish bastard," and then he stuck his head under her skirt and got down to business with his tongue, smiling when he felt her hand grip in his hair and the roll of her hips against him.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

He laughed, zipping himself back up and handing her the stiletto that had fallen off her foot when she'd slung her leg over his shoulder and ridden his face to climax with her fist shoved into her mouth to keep from screaming.

"No darling, I'm buying you one."

She kept his jacket on her shoulders when they strolled back into the bar and met the bartender's nonplussed stare, pulling out her lipstick and reapplying it using the flat of a knife as a mirror. Her lips rolled together in a smack that had him stirring to life again, but the rest of his condoms were back in his apartment. He told her as much after he popped the lime from between her teeth to take his own suck at the fruit, feeling the slide of her hand across his thigh and watching a blonde eyebrow arch in a knowing look.

The next morning he woke up alone in a rumpled bed, the taste of her still thick on his tongue despite the second ( _and third_ ) round of tequila, getting up to discover twin holes in the knees of his favourite jeans ( _totally worth it_ ) and that his leather jacket was missing while a phone number was scrawled on his bathroom mirror in red lipstick, next to the unmistakable imprint of a kiss.


	7. let slip your secrets, my darling

**This is another fic that was written during the Season 4 midwinter break - so it follows canon up to the end of 4A. Killian has his heart back, Rumple is banished, and CS can enjoy their first sexytimes, basically.**

* * *

 **let slip your secrets, my darling**

Of all the things he's longed to learn about Emma Swan, the many stories hidden behind her guarded and careful heart, the secrets she hoards as carefully as if they were precious jewels (and they are far more valuable to him than diamonds or pearls, the old pair of spectacles and the ring with the glass stone, every item in that simple box that he would treasure more now than any chest of gold coins because they were hers) he'd be lying if he said that he didn't want to know even more intimate aspects of the woman who has captivated him since Neverland, since he turned his ship around in search of more than vengeance and misery, hell, if he's honest (which he is, far more than most people realize) since she leaned forward on her elbows and let slip that first little gem, "I'm going to let you in on a little secret...I'm pretty good at knowing when someone is lying to me."

But of course he would never admit to his more carnal musings.

He is, after all, a gentleman.

He wants to know the exact shade of the flush that would spread across her breasts - would it be a seashell pink or a coral red? He's caught glimpses of their soft swells, peeking from the neckline of the shirts she wears, some that are as scanty as undergarments in his world and make him feel mildly scandalized to see her in them.

Although, he'd vastly prefer seeing her divested of those shirts, and trousers, and whatever she does wear for undergarments (and surely she does wear some form of them? she must, because if she doesn't then that thought alone is enough to do more than scandalize him, it makes him feel lightheaded as all the blood rapidly moves from his brain to more southern regions of his anatomy) and finally behold Swan in all her bare glory. And she will be glorious indeed.

He spent a year thinking about the cream of her skin and how it would look in the moonlight, imagining the shadows rippling across her back as he trailed his hand down her spine, driving himself mad with want and furious because she was locked away, the one treasure he could never find, no map to lead him back to what he had lost, what he never had, what had been so close. He tried to drown out the thoughts with drink, but they always rose back to the surface and bobbed in the back of his mind (would she tremble underneath his questing hand? would her skin be as soft as he remembered, as he dreamed it was?)

There's always a crisis. They take two steps forward, and three steps back. She asks for patience, and she asks for a date, and he grants her both (he'd give her anything and everything she asks for) and for days afterwards he recalls the feel of holding her with two hands, the warmth of her embrace and the taste of the wine on her tongue, and her skin is softer than he remembered, softer than in his dreams, and her cheeks flush and her voice drops low, and he wants to chase that flush all over her body and make her say his name in that voice, over and over again. The memory sustains him during the time that follows, when he's a puppet on a string and a bloody fool for falling into the Crocodile's jaws, barely able to stomach his own reflection in the glass despite the ease of his jests to the Dark One's oblivious wife.

He doesn't want to think about what he's been forced to do in service to his new master, so he clings to his thoughts of Emma instead. Would she be shy and maidenly in the bedchamber, sweet and pliant beneath him? Or would she be bold and daring, tart and demanding above him? He strongly suspects the latter, she is, after all, bold and daring in every other endeavour, but one never knows for certain without that first hand experience. It seems that he will never have the chance, when regret and despair curl up in the place where his heart should be, when there is the taste of ash in his mouth and his promises are as broken as the Snow Queen's mirror.

But fate, that strange mistress she is, grants him a reprieve. He is undeserving of such favour, but he'll take hold of it all the same, and an expression of such softness crosses her face when he places his heart in her hands that the empty spot in his chest aches in response.

The symbolism of Emma holding his heart is not lost on either of them. And while she may not be gentle, she returns it as she did that first time without realizing it, when she kissed him and his world suddenly tilted on it's axis and settled back in place with a new true north to guide him home.

When the knock at the door pierces the still of a quiet moment, he opens it and realizes in a heady rush that his questions will finally be answered. Emma has come to him at last, with surprising shyness in her downcast gaze as she steps into his chamber and into his arms. But he finds he too is uncharacteristically bashful, he's dreamed of this for so long, it has been his torment, his escape, his fantasy, and he is like the nervous young lad he was centuries ago as he traces the lines of her face with a shaking hand.

In the light of the single lamp he divests her of her shirt, and her trousers, and sees that she does wear undergarments, although they are mere scraps that do little to conceal her from his gaze. Her mouth is hot and sweet on his as she undresses him, fumbling with his waistcoat and peeling the shirt from his shoulders. She reaches behind her back and the lace that covers her breasts is suddenly gone, she presses against his chest and he lets out a low groan, because it's as glorious as he knew it would be.

"You like what you see?" she asks, voice high and girlish as he cups the weight of a breast in his hand and bends his head down to inspect it as closely as he would a gold coin.

"Aye," he murmurs, swiping his thumb over the peak and tasting it with his mouth. She arches against him and he likes that very much, so he sucks harder and uses his hook to pull down the bit of nothing she wears between her legs. She kicks it away with her foot and pulls him back up, cupping him through his trousers and he feels dizzy as he stiffens under her fingers.

She lays back on the bed while he slides the trousers off, watching her tongue dart out to lick her lips as he stands before her in his bare glory. The flush rises in her skin, it's rose pink and perfect, and he feels his own flush of masculine pride.

"You like what you see, Swan?' he teases, brushing his thumb over the jut of her hipbone and kneeling on the bed.

Her dark lashes flutter shut and she nods once, "I always did," she admits.

His gut tightens at her words, while he dreamed of her, had she dreamed of him?

Her skin is soft, but not unblemished. There are marks written on it, the scars of a life that has not been the pampered existence of her stolen birthright (and he wants to know the story behind every scar, and it thrills him to know that he probably will, one day) the muscles tense and relax under his exploring hand and soft sighs flow from her lips.

He follows his hand with his mouth, Emma is sweet and tart and he knows instantly he'll be addicted to the taste of her until the day he dies. Settling himself between her long legs he kisses his way up her thighs, feeling them tremble and scoring the delicate skin there with his beard (he'll mark her as much as he can tonight, he's a gentleman but he's still a pirate too and she is his).

She's rich and intoxicating on his tongue and he's immediately drunk, her nails scrape his scalp and pull him in closer, she's grinding herself against his face with wanton eagerness (shyness obviously fading and boldness taking over) and he searches out every place that makes her gasp and writhe, until she's pliant and limp beneath him.

But his princess is not a reticent maiden, and her hands wander over him, tracing over his scars (he'll tell her one day, all his many tales) and her lips drag over his throat and along his shoulder. She pushes him on his back and her hair tickles his chest, she explores him thoroughly with eager fingers and seeks him out with her mouth. It's warm around him, and she does wicked, wicked things with her tongue that make him see stars behind his closed lids and ruin his voice.

Fantasy and reality mix and mingle when they join together and her breath hitches, their foreheads pressed together. He's imagined it fast and he's dreamed of it slow, he's wanted to wreck her and he's wanted to worship her.

He's longed for Emma Swan, he's fought for Emma Swan, he's loved Emma Swan, with his stolen heart and his scarred soul and finally now with his damaged body.

"Killian," she murmurs, her voice dropped low, "Killian."

"Love," he whispers back, "Emma, my love."

She doesn't tense at the near admission as he thought she might, she only tightens her arms around him and he lets himself fall.

He's been falling for her since the day they met.

And she catches him at last.


	8. black swan

**This is an AU where straight-laced Captain Killian Jones of the Royal Navy is seduced by the notorious enchantress, the Black Swan.**

 **I wrote this before the Season 4 finale aired when we knew from spoilers that the characters were going to be different versions of themselves in a topsy-turvey Enchanted Forest but didn't know how it was going to play out exactly - so Emma and her parents are villains in this, but she's not meant to be the Dark One, just an evil witch.**

* * *

 **black swan**

She's on her knees when he enters the brig, head bowed and arms hanging limp. The chains that bind her (enchanted, as they have to be to hold and contain her power) are coiled on the floor, heavy manacles encircle her slender wrists. There's a pang low in his belly at the sight, to see a lady clapped in irons like a common thief.

But then, as her heads lifts and she rises from the floor in a sinuous roll of shoulders and breasts and hips, the chains rattling and scraping as they pull through the iron rings set into the floor, he reminds himself that the Black Swan might be a _princess_ , but she is no _lady_.

"Captain."

She rolls the word around in her mouth and sucks it through her teeth like a child savouring a particularly tasty sweet. She'd screamed it like an obscenity when they'd captured her, making him flinch, but the way she says it _now,_

 _"Killian."_

His _given_ name is a sigh on her lips, and his back goes straight and stiff at the sound (among other, _lower_ parts of his traitorous anatomy). She grins, swaying where she stands and it's not the rocking of the _Jewel_ that makes her move, his ship is sailing straight and true, despite the hurricane he's chained and caged in the heart of her.

"Your Highness."

His own voice is formal and betrays no hint of his boiling turmoil. He's fulfilled his mission for the Benevolent Queen and caught the biggest threat to the safety and hard won peace in the realm, they will make port in half a day and he should be up on deck directing his men and staying as far, far away from her as possible until the time comes to transfer her custody to the queen's guards, but, _gods above_ , he can't stay away.

"Come to gloat in my face?" she asks in a honeyed voice, "Come to bask in your victory, Captain Jones? Thought you'd stick your fingers through the bars and see if I bite?"

A smile, sharp and white and words that make him shudder, "Well, come closer then, and let's have a taste."

She looks a fright, hair a wild mass of untamed curls and knots hanging halfway down her back, gown torn just a bit at the shoulder, revealing the tender curve and dip of her collarbone, face white as snow and glittering jade eyes that piece through his uniform as if she is seeing into his very soul. He knows she is a powerful sorceress, an enchantress beyond measure, and above all else she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

His back hits the door with a muffled thump, he'd moved without thought, away from her, the temptress, the bloody _siren_ , the one with the darkest heart in the realm. She throws back her head and laughs, and he tries not to stare at the way her breasts push against the laces of her bodice, white swells rising and falling like the waves.

Tries, and fails _utterly._

The _Jewel_ creaks and groans around them and his spit-polished boots make no noise as he crosses the planks, drawn forward again. None of his men would go near her, despite her wild beauty, they've all heard the tales of who she is and what she can do. The _Black Swan_ , the _Destroyer_ , the daughter of two of the most terrible villains in all the land, she is feared and reviled and yet.

And _yet._

With his heart pounding madly in his chest, he, Killian Jones, captain of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, with a spotless record and a drawerful of medals and ribbons to attest to that fact, circles around her slowly and licks his lips. She goes completely still, but her eyes follow him, flicking from side to side and when he stands in front of her toe-to-toe, she is the one that blinks first.

She leans forward, irons clanking and breasts brushing against his chest. Her breath is hot on his face, and his hands clench at his sides (the left one with the strange throb and ache that he's been feeling in the limb for days. Ever since he was sent to find her, he would have gone to the end of the world to find her, he would have waited three hundred years to find her, he would have crossed realms and defied the gods themselves to find... _her_ ).

 _"You came all this way to capture me?" she spat at him, when she was dragged aboard the ship and the manacles were set on her wrists._

 _I came all this way to save you._

"What did you do to me?" he demands, voice hoarse and strained, "What spell did you cast that my every waking moment now is consumed with you?"

He tongue pokes out from between her teeth in amusement and he's frozen where he stands, unable to move as she brushes her nose on his neck and nuzzles her cheek against his.

"Is that what you think this is? A spell? Maybe you're just feeling your lust, Captain, all those lonely nights at sea on a ship full of smelly men, how long has it been since you've had a woman?"

The impertinence of the question makes colour flare in his cheeks and he swallows hard while his cock twitches and strains against his trousers, reminding him of just how long it's been and aching to be freed.

"Damn you," he whispers, turning his head and looking straight into her jewel-bright eyes.

"Kiss me," she pleads.

She does bite, and she bites hard, dragging his bottom lip between her teeth and making him hiss at the pain even as his hips rock forward and align perfectly with hers. Despite the bruising force her mouth is surprisingly sweet, and he sweeps his thumbs over the apples of her cheeks and cups the back of her head, tangling his tongue with hers and nipping back at her lips. A storm rages in his heart and fire burns in his veins, his veil of decorum lies around him in ragged tatters and they crash down to the floor together in a heap. He finds her neck, sucking red marks into her fine white skin and biting at the flesh revealed by the tear in her gown. His collar is too tight and sweat trickles down his back and she arches and writhes under him, laughing in triumph and pouring utter _filth_ into his ear.

"Quiet!" he orders, but she ignores him.

"Afraid your men will hear us, Captain? They're sailors, not a bunch of blushing virgins. Don't you want them to hear how very virile and manly you are, how you came in here to make me scream your name? That is why you came to me, isn't it?"

Her words make him see red, he wants it, he wants it all and even as some small part of him weakly protests that he's a gentleman he's kneeling astride her, throwing off his jacket with haste. His hands go to the neckline of her gown, rending the bodice from her shoulders and tearing it open, the silk parting like water under his eager fingers. Her blouse is yanked down and he buries his face in her bare breasts, tweaking a rosy peak and cupping the soft mound in his hand. She gasps, and then she moans, and his cock goes even harder as her legs wrap clumsily around him, hindered somewhat by the heavy folds of her gown. There's a rattling sound that plucks at the back of his mind but he's too distracted with bunching the skirt to her waist and fumbling with her undergarments and his own trouser buttons, he feels her at last, _slick_ and _warm_ and _ready_ and he palms himself, on his knees between her thighs and ready too, oh so very ready.

The words she speaks are like an icy dash of water to his face.

"Are you really going to take a prisoner you have chained to the floor, Captain? Not very _honourable_ of you now is it?"

The fog of lust that clouds him clears somewhat and he looks down in horror. He is a gentleman, a man with a code, not this rutting, mindless brute. She gazes up at him, arms spread and bound and he can see the bruises on her wrists, dark and angry marks that fill him with shame.

"No, I...I would never...forgive me, milady."

Her eyes narrow to slits and there's a sharp clink. The manacles fall from her wrists and his jaw drops in shock, but before he can blink he's on his back and she's rising above him, yanking his head back and pressing the point of a knife she conjured from the air to his throat.

It's _oddly_ familiar.

"Who sent you?"

He can't shake his head without getting his throat slit so he simply grits his teeth and lies right through them, "No one."

Pain blooms when she twists the blade, the skin about to break and she glares at him, "I'm going to let you in on a little secret, I'm pretty good at knowing when someone is lying to me."

A strange expression flickers across her face, eyes unfocused and mouth softening for a moment before she snaps back to herself with a shake of her head.

The mission is supposed to be a secret, but he spills his guts, telling her about the alliance the Benevolent Queen formed, the rumours of a boy from a strange land and his wild claims of magic gone wrong and the woman he calls,

"The Saviour," she finishes, looking away and speaking as if she's trying to convince herself, "But that's just a myth, a _story_."

He squirms a bit, trying to keep his eyes on his face and not looking down to where her bodice hangs open and doing his best not to notice that she's practically sitting on his lap and his cock is still hard and aching and almost positioned _just_ right.

Trying, and _failing._

She notices him noticing.

A lazy smile curls her lips and he feels her thighs part and the drag as they slide along his hips.

"You know, I was going to kill you, but I can think of a far more pleasant activity to share with a man on his back."

A low groan rumbles in his chest when the knife disappears and she leans down, kissing along the line of his jaw. Seven hells, she's the bloody _Black Swan_ and she's probably going to kill him afterwards anyway, but at least he'll die a happy man and his hands are on the smooth curve of her waist, guiding her down on him as he thrusts sharply _up_.

He gets splinters in his arse.

Her eyes flutter shut and she moans prettily when his fingers find the place where they're joined under the billows of her skirt and he presses his thumb to the sensitive little bud until she's limp and breathless.

He rolls her onto her back then and he could easily slip the cuff back on her wrist.

She lets him (and he doesn't).

Their fingers lace together tight over their heads and her ankles lock at the small of his back, he circles his hips, once, twice, snapping them against her and he whispers against her lips, "Swan."

She doesn't kill him afterwards, she leaves him on his knees, a manacle around his wrist (again, _oddly_ familiar), and he's got about ten hours before they make port and he has to come up with an explanation for the Benevolent Queen as to how exactly he let the notorious Black Swan escape from his custody. How he chose her, and the consequences of that decision because he'll probably be stripped of his rank and have to turn pirate after this.

But all he can think about is the look on her face, the soft smile when he went rigid in her arms and spilled himself inside her with a single word. Not her moniker, but her true name.

" _Emma._ "


	9. fallen skies

**A little post apocalyptic AU**

* * *

 **fallen skies**

Henry is the one who finds him.

Filthy, half-starved (they all are these days) with a blood-soaked bandage wrapped crudely around his left hand and an empty gun in his right.

(no bullets, but she takes it anyway and slides it into the back of her waistband before bending back down to the stranger)

They should leave him and move on, they need to keep moving, staying in one place too long is dangerous and he's unconscious (not dead, Henry insists, checking his heartbeat and pulse over her protests) and she doesn't know how long it will be until (or.. _if_ ) he wakes up. She doesn't know what kind of man he is, only that it looks like he got into a hell of a fight with someone (or... _something_ ) and there's plenty of men out there now who would take one look at her, a pretty blonde woman with a ten year old son and no one else and think _"easy pickings."_ If he's one of them then she'd be lucky if he only stole the Bug and the hard-won supplies they've managed to scavenge while leaving both her and Henry unharmed, if he's not, then she'd be leaving him to die.

She can't take that chance.

She _can't._

Henry is more important than the unknown man with the dark hair and the black leather jacket. Her son is everything, all she has left. They have to leave the stranger behind.

"Mom, he's awake!"

His eyes are bright with fever and as blue as the sky used to be...before.

Emma had almost forgotten it.

(they don't leave him behind)

Not that she trusts him immediately, she doesn't, she doesn't trust anyone except her son (who trusts everyone, much to her chagrin) but it's pretty clear that he's in no shape to be any kind of threat. The blue eyes watch her warily as she unwinds the dirty bandage while Henry cuts one of their precious towels (everything is precious now) into strips for a new one and the injury almost makes her throw up when the extent of it is revealed. It's clearly not new, but it's bad, he's lost three fingers completely and she's no doctor but she's pretty sure the hand is infected, words like _"gangrene"_ and _"blood poisoning"_ run through her head although she doesn't say them out loud.

The eyes meet hers, and he _knows._

"The cellar," he gasps, "Med kit, antibiotics. The key is in my jacket pocket. _Please-_ "

He passes out again, eyes rolling back and lashes resting against his cheeks. Even under the dirt and grime Emma can tell he's a handsome man, and her thumb lingers on his cheek for a moment before she fishes the key from his jacket and goes searching for the door to the cellar. It's set flush into the floor, hidden under a rug and easy to miss.

What she finds there makes her jaw drop.

Supplies that will keep them alive for weeks, months, _years_. Food. Water. Blankets. She's heard of places like these, where those who knew what was coming prepared to ride out the storm while everyone else was caught unaware. But she's never found one before, and for a moment she considers packing as much as she and Henry can carry into the Bug and taking off, leaving the dark-haired, blue-eyed man behind.

(only for a moment...but it's the longest moment since the one she had the morning she woke up and realized that Neal had left them, no, _abandoned_ them in the night, taking his bag and the granola bars and leaving them the canned chili but no note, another moment when the world shifted under her feet and nothing would ever be the same again)

When he wakes up again a few hours later his eyes meet hers again with a look of relief that tells Emma he expected her to take the supplies and run.

His name is Killian, and Henry tells him both his name and hers before Emma can stop him, not that it really matters. How he wound up in the cabin in the woods with a mangled hand and a gun and a fortune in hidden supplies is a question she's not sure she wants to know the answer to. So she doesn't ask and he doesn't volunteer, but he's kind to her son and Henry smiles more around him than he has in _months_.

She can't remember her last real smile, not the ones she puts on to pretend to Henry that everything is fine (it's _not_ ). Before Neal ran off, before the sky turned, before civilization came crashing down around them and all that was left was this desperate struggle to survive.

...

"Come in before you catch your death of cold, love."

The voice calls from the porch and when Emma turns she can just make out his silhouette leaning against one of the posts. They use the candles and battery-powered lanterns sparingly after the sun goes down and there's almost no light, just the moon overhead and the stars looking down at what's left of the world.

What's left of _her._

"Does it really matter?"

Silence. Did any of it really matter, anymore? What's the point of conserving the matches and rationing the food when they're going to starve eventually if one of the roving gangs that sprung up after society fell doesn't get them first? Some part of her wonders if that's where Neal went, to join the lost boys who no longer cared about things like law and decency when there was no one left to enforce it. _Once a thief, always a thief._

"It matters to your boy...and it matters to me."

He says it in a whisper that has her closing her eyes. There's something between them, something that sparked during the hours while Henry slept and she stayed awake, holding Killian's good hand as she waited to see if he was strong enough to fight off the infection with the sudden realization that she didn't want the blue-eyed stranger to die.

(even if it meant more food would be left for her and Henry)

A rustle as he crunches through the fallen leaves to where she stands with her arms wrapped tight around her against the chill. It's always chilly now, a perpetual autumn has taken place where leaves fall as soon as they grow and she lives in fear of winter. He moves slowly, he's still recovering and he's not at full strength, but when she turns into his embrace and buries her face into his shoulder he holds her up easily enough.

"It matters to _me_."

...

The cabin is small, one room that serves as the living space with a tiny kitchen along one wall and one room that serves as the bedroom - with only a curtain separating the two. She and Henry share the twin bed with the worn quilts, while Killian sleeps without complaint on the lumpy couch. They play endless games of Monopoly and read books out loud to each other to pass the time, there's a shelf with several novels that runs the gamut from Harry Potter to Hemingway. Not everything there is appropriate for a ten year old, there's a battered old romance novel about a pirate and a kidnapped princess with several racy sex scenes that she skips over and goes on to the next swashbuckling adventure instead. After Henry falls asleep that night Killian thumbs through the book while she boils water for tea on the woodstove (what she would give for a hot chocolate) and she turns to find him holding it out to her with a cheeky, "You missed a few pages."

Emma looks down and feels her cheeks flush hot when she sees exactly what chapter he's referring to, the one where the pirate and the princess finally succumb to their attraction and make wild, _passionate_ love in the captain's quarters. It's tempting to accept his winking challenge and take the book back to read the section out loud, maybe see how the lumpy couch compares to the captain's sumptuous bed, but her son is a light sleeper (has been, ever since his father... _left_ ) and sex is a complication that could bind them together or push them apart and she's not sure she'd survive it, if she lost _him_ too. So she sets the book back on the shelf and hands him _Sorcerer's Stone_ instead. Killian reads it while she curls up next to him, helping him turn the pages (his hand pains him, she knows it does though they never speak of it when she holds things for him or does the things he can't) his voice low and soothing and she's asleep before Harry wakes on Christmas morning.

(there's no Christmas anymore, but there's Killian's arm around her and the warmth of his body next to hers)

...

They show up one afternoon, three of them appearing silently from between the trees while Emma is out hanging laundry on the line. They don't do it often because they have to make the soap last and it takes forever for the clothes to dry under the clouded sky, but she lives in a very small cabin with a ten year old boy and an adult man and sometimes it's just has to be done before she dies from the fumes.

Three men, two older, one younger but not young enough. She freezes, as still as a doe with the primal hope that if she doesn't move they won't see her, but of course they do and one makes a lewd comment about her bra and underwear pegged up next to Henry's hoodie that make the other two smile knowingly.

It's dangerous to stay in one place too long, they should have moved on weeks ago but she didn't know if Killian would have come with them and she was too afraid to ask, too afraid of him saying no (and more afraid of him saying _yes_ ) so she told herself that the cabin was isolated enough to be safe for her and her son. But as the three of them start to come closer, asking her _name_ , asking if she has any extra _food_ , asking if she's _alone…._

"That's a man's shirt."

The youngest notices Killian's henley on the end of the line and the other two halt, eyes darting from side to side as one pulls a gun.

It's strange, the absolute certainty that fills her in the space of a heartbeat. She'll do whatever it takes to keep these men away from Henry, whatever it takes, and she flings the laundry basket one way and takes off in the opposite direction. They start to follow just like she planned, but then there's a flash of dark hair and Killian has one on the ground.

"Swan, _run!"_

He yells it as the other two rush over and she should run, she should get Henry from the cabin and flee to where the Bug is carefully hidden a few hundred feet away. Her son is all she has left and she needs to keep him safe, but Killian is down on the ground now and the three men will kill him as soon as the one with the gun can get a clean shot. She knows it and he knows it but he yells it again at the top of his lungs, "Run! Go!" The youngest one screams and he doesn't notice her approach from behind with the axe they use to split kindling for the woodstove.

The blood splatters right across Henry's hoodie, red and wet.

Killian has a knife, and his face is grim when he slits the throat of the one who leered at her bra.

The third tries to run.

He doesn't make it far.

Three men lie dead and Emma wants nothing more than to run away from this nightmare but she can't, she has to be strong, for Henry, for her son. He's safe in the cabin, Killian assures her, telling her he told him to hide in the cellar with the rug pulled over the door when he spotted the men from the window.

He could have left them behind like Neal did.

But he didn't.

He _didn't._

They drag the bodies deep into the woods, out of sight, and cover them with leaves. The blood is washed away in the small creek where Killian and Henry race boats made of twigs, he says nothing and his eyes dart away when she strips right down to her underwear to get it all off. For once Henry doesn't ask a million questions when they return, suddenly, impossibly older in an instant, and after he falls asleep in the twin bed she places a kiss on his forehead and goes into the other room where Killian sits and stares at the fire. Their sanctuary is no more, and he hands her a glass of precious rum from the single bottle of liquor that was among the supplies. They should probably keep it for disinfectant or something, but she drinks it down and ignores the burn.

"Henry and I...we need to leave."

Killian nods once, "Aye."

"First thing in the morning, we're packing up."

The question lingers on the tip of her tongue (what if he says _no?_ what if he says _yes?_ ) and finally she sets the empty glass down on the chipped coffee table with a thump.

"Come with us. _Please."_

They don't make love, there's no time for that, but he lays her back on the lumpy couch and she locks her legs tight around his waist. Henry is asleep in the next room so they have to leave their clothes (mostly) on, but it doesn't matter when Killian buries himself so deep inside her in one thrust and his mouth is hot on hers. It's fast and needy, she muffles her climax in his shoulder and he shudders silently in her arms when he finds his a few moments later.

(any guilt she might have felt is gone, it was _them_ or _him_ and she would have made the choice a thousand times over, she's still technically married but they've killed for each other now and made a vow without words that runs deeper than anything she ever had with Neal)

...

The men had a truck, they find it the next day and Killian goes back to the bodies alone to look for the keys. He returns and presses them into her hand, she folds her fingers around them and kisses him softly. It's bigger than the Bug and the bed is packed with gear, tents, fishing rods, _full_ gas cans. They add their own supplies, the food and the medkits, the bottled water and the half-empty bottle of rum. Henry packs his few clothes and doesn't ask what happened to his hoodie, they take the quilt off the bed and all the Harry Potters.

(Emma slips the romance novel into her backpack and smiles at the dark-haired pirate drawn on the cover)

South, they decide, they'll head south. Towards the ocean, there's still fish in the sea and Killian says he knows how to sail. If they can scavenge a boat somewhere...but first they'll have to make it that far.

Killian took the gun from the men and they've still got his, there's extra ammo in the truck and he loads them both before giving her one and tucking the other into the pocket of his leather jacket. He slides into the passenger seat and his eyes meet hers as Henry buckles his seatbelt in the back.

They'll make it.

She hasn't seen the sea in years, not since...before. The sky is no longer blue and that means the ocean isn't either, it won't look the way she remembers. But when Killian reaches across the seat to clasp her right hand as best as he can in his left one while she drives them away from the cabin, Emma knows that it doesn't matter.

They head south, together.


	10. after the end of our story

**Written for a prompt of Killian being tempted by a siren using Emma's form. This is set after he sacrifices himself and before he arrives in the Underworld.**

* * *

 **after the end of our story**

He's dead.

Or at least, he thinks he is.

The skiff sails down a river, moving without wind or waves and guided by some unseen hand. A lantern is hung above the bow, swinging back and forth from the mouth of the swan. The whole boat is shaped like the large bird, carved wings that cup and cradle him as he lies on his back and stares up at the moonless sky.

A sailor was always buried at sea, sewn up in his own hammock and consigned to the deep. But no linen shrouds his face and he floats instead of sinks, drifting along water as dark as ink. He thinks he might drift forever, the river doesn't seem to end and he catches no sign of shore or bank beyond the yellow cone of light.

 _Gold hair, that was as bright as the sun gone white as the moon, silver and gold, he'll take either one, for he's a pirate and she's a treasure, a hidden jewel with gemstone eyes._

Memories seep from him like the blood that stained the blade and soaked the ground when she ran him through. Silver hair and red lips, and a love that was a blight and damned them both. He remembers, and then he doesn't, it slips away like it was stolen by the wind. She is taken from him piece by piece, the words he'd longed to hear before she was swallowed up by darkness, a soft pink gown and a softer smile, he's a gentleman and she's a lady and deserves a proper courtship or as best as he can manage in this strange land. All the pages of their book, their tale, their story of Neverland and New York, beanstalks and ballgowns, a broken pirate and a lost princess...it passes through his fingers like sand, impossible to hold and then it's gone.

Gone…

Gone…

 _Gone..._

He's dead.

Her eyes were blue, sea and sky and sadness. She loves him, and he loves her, though at first it was merely an amusement, a warm bed and petty posturing in front of a snivelling coward to make his men laugh and bolster his tale. He steals wives as well as gold, he bows to no king and flies no flag save the Jolly Roger. She is his and he becomes hers, and they'll go back for her boy, one day, when he's old enough, one day...the sorrow that never quite leaves her even as he shows her wonders.

One day.

One day _he_ comes back, coward turned Crocodile, and then she's gone.

Sea and sky fade away, another tale forgotten as black water laps at the boat and he drifts on.

The moon does not rise though the sun never set, and the stars...there was a man once, a good one, with broad shoulders that carried too much weight and yet never bowed. He knew how to read the stars, to raise the sail, a sailor and a brother. Blood kin and bound, in honour and duty and love. The face is twin to his own, a reflection in a mirror that slowly goes dark.

Is this death? To be taken apart piece by piece until nothing was left? The swan boat carries him along...to the end of the world and the end of time and he closes his eyes.

He's dead.

He decides he can live with that.

There's no sound save for the lap of the water against the boat and a pleasant hum in his ears. His heart no longer beats and the rhythm is something else, it rises and falls and makes his fingers twitch. It's a song, sweeter than honey and more intoxicating than spirits, filling his head with dreams of coy smiles and low necklines, pearl-pink skin and quivering thighs. He's dead, but parts of him are stirring to life and he rises in more ways than one, sitting up and peering around into the gloom. The voice sings without words, just as lovers sang their pleasure in his bed and he loses himself in the sound as he lost himself in soft breasts and flared hips. It's driving him mad, scrambling to his knees in the boat and searching fruitlessly for the source.

 _Look down_

She's _under_ the water, a mermaid without a tail, swimming on her back and looking up at him. He snatches the lantern from the swan's mouth and holds it over the side of the boat so he can see her better, the yellow light revealing plump cheeks and delicate collarbones, pert breasts and slim legs. Gloriously bare, hair streaming over her shoulders and the shadow of her navel a dip that he longs to trace with his thumb. She disappears and he feels frantic worry immediately claw at his belly before a splash alerts him that she's dived under the boat and is on the other side now. A smile lights her face when he finds her again but she doesn't stop singing, the lilting call draws him closer and closer to the dark water until he's almost touching it. Her hand rises, palm open and he places his over hers above the river.

The boat is more than big enough for two and he can easily pull her up, but something makes him pause before plunging his arm under. He lifts the light higher and frowns, feels the Swan rock under him.

Swan.

Her smile falters, brows knitting together as she beckons and he doesn't answer. Long fingers probe from under the waves but don't break the surface and he realizes quickly that she _can't._ She's trapped, only able to reach him through her song and her palm turns and beckons again. More insistent this time, sinking down and rising up. He wants to follow, wants it more than he can remember ever wanting anything.

He can't remember ever wanting anything.

He can't remember anything.

 _Swan_

Lips pull back in a grimace, hands turn to claws as the song grows louder and he feels his eardrums will burst from it as pain lances through his head and he collapses back into the boat with his hands clapped over his ears.

Hand.

There's only one.

The Swan rocks more violently this time, nearly tipping over and the lantern knocks on it's side. Light dances over his face and gleams off the curve of the hook.

" _So you have heard of me?"_

He pulls himself back up and peers over the side. She's still there, glaring up at him and he blinks. The shape of the face, the curve of the jaw, the slope of the breasts. It pulls at the back of his mind while the song is a muted, muffled noise that is as sour as vinegar and as foul as bilgewater.

"You're not her."

The eyes widen, cheeks going hollow instead of full and long strands of golden hair floating away in thick clumps. She withers before his eyes, beauty fading as the creature underneath was revealed. Shark teeth and mottled skin, like a bird plucked of its feathers and stripped of all plumage. They stare at each other, until she sinks down and the river swallows her whole.

His name is Killian Jones.

He's dead.

But _she's_ still alive and she's the most stubborn woman he's ever encountered in all the realms he's travelled. Their love is a beacon, a guiding light and as he sinks back into the embrace of the swan boat and stares up at a sky suddenly filled with stars he wonders if perhaps their story is not quite finished yet.


	11. the arrangement

**Dark Swan/Captain Hook AU where he returns from Neverland to kill the Dark One at last, only to find to his chagrin that it's no longer Rumpelstiltskin who holds that title. Instead, it's a beautiful woman who offers him a deal.**

* * *

 **the arrangement**

The Crocodile is dead.

He'd pictured this moment a hundred, a _thousand_ times and more, it kept him going through the endless days and nights on that cursed isle where boys never became men and his brother's blood was an everlasting stain that never fully melted into the ground.

But all of it was for nought.

The Crocodile is dead, but it was not by his hand _(or hook)_ , and the rage simmers hot under his skin as he stares at the woman who _stole_ his vengeance from him.

The Dark One stares back, the flickering torchlight revealing glittering jade eyes and silver hair pulled back severely from a young looking face. Her red lips curl in a sneer, "I'm very sorry to have disappointed you, Captain. Now are you going to let me out of here or not?"

He turns and begins to stalk away from the cell with the dreamshade still wet on the steel of his hook _(his hand is gone, his love is lost, and he's failed)_ when the voice stops him in his tracks.

"You know what he said before he died? He said he never expected it to be me, he thought that "the handless pirate" would come back one day and try to stab him in the back. I'll go out on a limb, no pun intended, and say he meant you. Maybe you didn't kill him, but he spent all that time glancing over his shoulder for you."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" he spits, and she shrugs, one shoulder lifting in a graceful roll under the black leather that encases her from neck to heel.

"Doesn't it? I can tell you everything, if you really want to know. I can tell you how I slipped the dagger between his ribs and felt his blood drip on my hands. I can take you to where I did it and I can put my memory into your head so you can feel everything I felt, so you can watch the life drain from his eyes the way I did. I'll do all of that for you...if you let me out."

Hook considers her offer, takes in the way her fingers curl tight around the bars of her cell and the hint of desperation behind the purr of seduction in her voice. This new Dark One wants out of her cage badly, it seems, and if he can't have his revenge then he'll take everything else he can get his greedy hand on. He _is_ a pirate, after all.

"One one condition, darling. If I let you out, you promise not to kill me, you give me everything I ask for for one month, and you tell me your real name."

"That's three conditions, pirate."

He spreads hand and hook open, "Take it or leave it, Dark One. See, I know how this works. If we have a deal, then you have to abide by it. My conditions are the price of your freedom."

The jade eye blink once, and she smiles without a hint of warmth, "Done."

The scroll appears in her hand when he unlocks the cell, parchment unrolling with the terms spelled out in tiny print that he has to squint to read. She huffs, rolling her eyes as he runs a finger over each line and, satisfied with the contract, takes the proffered feather quill and signs his name at the bottom with an elaborate flourish.

"Killian Jones?" she reads, and he gives a mocking little bow.

"At your service...Miss?"

"Emma."

The name drops flat from her lips and her eyes go dull in the torchlight as she fulfils one of his conditions, "My name was Emma."

...

He takes back his rightful place as he pillages and plunders his way across the realm and his name spreads through the ports like spilled ink, blotting out all the pretenders to his throne who also sail under the crimson flag. Well his moniker does, at least, and it's _Captain Hook_ who brings entire fleets to their knees and has a price of a thousand gold pieces on his head, the broadsheets are posted in every tavern and he takes great pleasure in sitting directly underneath them and ordering a bottle of rum from wide-eyed barmaids as they flick their gaze from the scowling likeness above to his knowing grin. The name Killian Jones is long since forgotten and he tells himself he doesn't care, the men raise their glasses to Captain Hook and the wenches scream it when he takes them to bed and loses himself for a while between a pair of soft thighs.

 _She_ never calls him that though, when he summons her with the name she gave him unwillingly and gives him whatever he asks for, as per their deal. The Dark One addresses him as Killian every time, and on the twenty-ninth day she takes him to the place where she killed the Crocodile and lets him watch what happened through her eyes as she promised she would.

"Satisfied, Killian?" she asks, when the twisted body on the ground fades into nothingness and he lands back into himself with a thump.

"Not really," he sighs, feeling the tattoo itch and burn under his sleeve. The dagger is clasped in her hand as it was on the night he just relived and her beautiful face is pinched tight under the moonlight. "Why'd you kill him anyway? What did he do to you, Emma?"

She doesn't answer, and he could force her to reveal it but he decides not to, it's late and the fatigue of three hundred years is heavy on his shoulders. She returns him to the _Jolly_ in a swirl of red smoke that makes his eyes water, and when he blinks it away he realizes that she came along and is standing in the middle of his cabin.

He knows more than he lets on, he knows now that she was a princess once. He's heard the tale, how the Dark One coveted her power and tried to steal it away from her and he knows it was her own family who locked her in the cell where he found her.

"I'm not like he was," she says, more to herself than him, "I don't...I didn't choose _this."_

Of course she did, the same way he chose desertion and piracy after Liam's death and chose to mark his skin with Milah's name and hunt down her murderer at the expense of his own soul. Choices, not easily made but made nonetheless and they all have to live with what they've become.

Or not.

When he takes her to his bed it's her choice, he offers instead of orders and she accepts after some contemplation, another hard bargain struck between them. The silver hair falls down loose on her back and her clothes melt away in a whirl of magic, dark and enticing like the spice of rum on his tongue. Her white skin is cool to the touch but it quickly warms under his ministrations, her belly tightens and flexes when he runs his tongue over the gentle curve and fans his fingers over her hip. She tugs him up by his necklace and presses her lips to his, legs parting underneath him as she scrapes her teeth against his jaw and he shudders at the burst of pleasure and pain. He wanted to kill the Dark One and for a moment he considers sinking the point of his hook into her neck, bared to him when he runs the curve of the steel over it and pushes her chin back. But he settles for worrying a mark into it with his teeth instead and shoves his hips forward. She's wet for him, her quim is hot and tight and perfect around his cock and he chuckles against her skin.

"What's so funny?" she breathes in his ear.

"I don't know whether I want to kill you or ravish you, Dark One."

She gives a hard smack to his arse that forces him deeper inside and makes him groan, "You can't kill me, _Hook_ , so you might as well ravish me."

He sets a hard pace, bedclothes twisting beneath them as he thrusts into her roughly with her thighs wrapped tight over his hips and his bare chest sliding against her equally bare breasts with each deep stroke. Sharp nails rake down his back, drawing blood, and he knows he'll bear the marks for days but it only spurs him on and the whole bunk rattles from the force of it.

The name that spills from his lips when he reaches his peak is not his lost love, he's done that more than once while in bed with someone else to their fury and his chagrin. _Milah forgive me,_ he thinks every time it happens and he thinks it again when he cries another woman's name in the bed they once shared.

"You know," she murmurs in a voice that slips over him like silk when she lays on his chest afterwards and draws her long fingers over him in lazy patterns, "The month is up and I could kill you right now."

Hook's eyes close, he expected this, "I know what I signed, Emma. Go ahead."

The hands stops, spreading out flat, "You _knew?"_

"I read the damn thing, didn't I? You wouldn't kill me and you'd give me anything I asked...for one month. Clever wording, that."

He braces himself, but her fingers don't sink into his chest and pluck out his blackened heart.

"Why do you keep calling me Emma?"

"It's your name, innit?"

"Not anymore."

Her voice is quiet and there's a hint of sadness behind the words. He wraps his arm around her and sighs, he knows what it is to lose your own name. He wonders if he'll forget his eventually, he can feel the pieces that were once Killian Jones fade away more and more with each day that passes. Easier to be Hook, the man who cares for nothing and no one but himself.

"Do you still want to kill the Dark One, Killian?" she asks at last, leg thrown over his and her face buried in his neck.

"Aye, but I really don't wish to kill _you_ , love. Do you want to kill me?"

"Yes...but I won't. For now."

She's gone in the morning when he wakes, and he stands at the prow of his ship just before dawn with what she left behind clutched in his hand. The contract he signed, ripped neatly in half and he lets the pieces fall into the sea where they quickly sink and disappear beneath the black waves.


	12. mirror, mirror

**canon divergence where only Emma gets transported to the mirror realm by the Evil Queen**

 **mirror, mirror**

He remembers the cravats he used to wear, folded and tucked neatly inside his stiff and starched collar while he holds up this realm's versions to Henry's neck and hides his smile at the lad's nervous twitch. The expected attire for Storybrooke's upcoming school ball may differ from the kidskin gloves and the embroidered waistcoats that he once donned in that former life, but his knees had knocked under his breeches and his palms had sweated in the gloves at the prospect of squiring a pretty young flower like the Lady Violet to an evening fete.

(so many lifetimes ago, but his knees go weak when Emma smiles at him and the years slip away as they always do in her company, when Captain Hook is forgotten and Killian Jones smiles back)

Regina enters, ashen faced and jacket torn to ribbons at the elbow, she's bleeding and limping and all he can hear is a great roaring in his ears because she's _alone_. The thin cravat falls to the floor from his suddenly sweaty and shaking hand as Snow White and Henry immediately rush to her side and her dark eyes lift to meet his across the room. The Evil Queen bested them, anticipating the trap so carefully laid to snare her and Emma…

Emma is _gone_.

(he can't kill the queen, he won't orphan another boy ever again for the sins of another, but if Emma is dead he swears he'll find a way to make her answer for her crimes and she _will_ pay dearly for what's she's done)

There are tears in Snow White's eyes that she tries to hide, her famed complexion gone grey and tired.

"We'll find her," he says, even as he presses the hook flat against his thigh to stop himself from sinking it into the nearest surface in despair, "The family motto, yeah?"

Regina returns from the privy with a thick bandage on her elbow and a mirror in her hand, "Finding her isn't the problem, I know where she is. Getting her out is what's going to be the tricky part."

The surface of the glass ripples like water and his heart thumps painfully in his chest when the reflection finally clears.

Emma is _trapped._

...

Killian takes the mirror home with him, it's small enough to slip into the inner pocket of his jacket and he keeps patting his chest to reassure himself that it hasn't vanished. Dave drives – Snow woke him up after Regina left with Henry in tow. The infant prince babbles happily from the strange contraption he's safely strapped into, blissfully unaware of both his parents' shared curse and his sister's absence.

The ride is otherwise quiet, with the women they love so close and yet… Dave sighs, the lines around his eyes cut a little deeper than only a few short days ago. He may be sleeping half the days' hours, but it's clearly not a restful slumber and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel while his shoulders are practically hunched up to his ears with the tension. Still, he puts on a smile when he parks the truck at the curb and asks to see Emma again.

"Hey, honey."

She can hear him but they can't hear her – sound doesn't travel through the glass from the realm she's trapped in. Killian peers over Dave's shoulder and watches her lips move, frustration clear in the furrow of her brow when her father can't decipher what she's trying to say. He's grown fairly adept at parsing her moods without words, a necessity when their courtship consisted entirely of looks exchanged across the fire in Neverland and things left unspoken more often than not, but her unhappiness was plain to see and was reflected in the face of the man who sat next to him.

"I have to go back home to your mother, but if you need us, any time, day or night, just….I don't know, stick your tongue out at him and that'll be the Mom and Dad signal, OK?"

Killian snorts while the ghost of a smile flits over her face and he can see her stick her tongue out in the mirror.

"Yeah, that's it. I love you, Emma."

Dave lingers over the curve of the glass for a moment with his fingertips, clearly reluctant to let her go. But his wife and son need him in this world, and after a moment he hands the mirror back over with another deep sigh,"Call us if she-"

"I will," Killian promises, and once Emma is secured over his heart he pats her father on the shoulder in what he hopes is not an unwelcome show of support. His place in their family is…uncharted waters and sailing has been anything but smooth. Dave doesn't flinch from his touch, and the little prince gives him a gummy smile before he closes the door.

(his innocence in all this is almost painful to watch, and must be protected at all costs. Emma would want that for her brother, and he's already failed his own young sibling who is still convalescing in an infirmary bed)

The mirror itself is round and has a little stand that allows it to rotate to whichever angle he pleases. He sets it on the coffee table, on the kitchen counter, on the nightstand as he moves about the house and makes sure she can see him at all times - save for a quick but necessary visit to the privy. The enchantment was meant to keep the queen in bondage for the rest of Regina's life and is therefore supposedly unbreakable, though she swore to Henry she'd find a way to reverse it and get Emma back out before his big date.

If she can't, then he'll tell her to send _him_ to the realm on the other side of the glass, he won't leave her alone in there, he won't, he _can't_ , though he keeps that particular plan to himself for now. Emma will protest, even without words he knows they'll have a furious row about it and he's not in the mood for a one-sided argument that she _will_ lose. Her parents have each other, and her brother, Henry has Regina, and Emma has him. He'll follow her into exile, and do it with a smile on his face and a song in his heart.

She watches him with her chin propped in her hand as he makes a simple supper of bread and cheese (the fish he bought has disappeared somewhat suspiciously) and finds himself telling her tales about the _Jolly's_ old cook, a disagreeable man who was blind in one milky eye and insisted on serving pickled lemons at almost every meal.

"Think a regular lemon is sour, Swan? Now imagine adding salt. But there's not a sailor on my crew who ever lost so much as a single tooth to scurvy, so Ole Ben would box the ears of any who turned their nose up at his cuisine."

Emma wrinkles her nose at his description of a typical ship's rations (hardtack that could double as cannon shot, dried peas, salt beef that on less reputable vessels might well actually be old horsemeat instead) and he moves the mirror to the table while he eats, gesturing with his hook between bites as he waxes rhapsodic on the joys of fresh-made turtle soup (don't give me that look, don't knock it till you've tried it, love) and mangoes picked straight from the tree when they sailed the southern trade routes. Henry calls (Regina's buried in spellbooks, no progress yet) and he holds the phone up to the mirror so the lad can FaceTime (or Facebook, or Face...something he can't remember which is which right now) with his mother. Snow calls (Dave is asleep now, the bed is just visible over her shoulder) and talks at Emma with forced cheer.

Night falls, the shadows lengthening on the walls as the sun sets around their home. The irony is not lost on Killian – he's only just moved in, and now she's left, as always, his courtship of Emma Swan is two steps forward, three steps back. The happy ending he doesn't deserve is perpetually just out of his reach and if the Oracle's words are true and Emma's vision does come to pass….

A faint tapping sound pulls him from his thoughts and he sees she's rapping on the glass with concern on her face, a furrow between her brows and downturned lips. He sits on the edge of the bed and scrubs his hand over his face, suddenly bone-weary and feeling every last one of the hundreds of years he's lived.

(existed? endured? he'll sink back into grey nothingness without her, the light she gives to a broken pirate who resigned himself to being alone in the dark is not a candle that can be relit once snuffed)

"I'm sorry….I just, I miss you, Emma."

She looks down for a moment, lashes resting on her cheeks and then she draws a shape on the mirror with the tip of her finger.

It's a heart.

He doesn't need to hear the words when her lips move to know what's she's saying.

"I love you too."

She watches him undress and he gives her a bit of a show, smirking at the flush that rises in her skin when he pops the button on his jeans and tugs the material down with his hook. If the queen is secretly spying on them now from her hidey-hole he cares not, all he sees is Emma's smile and the heat in her gaze when he settles on his side in the bed with the sheet pooling low around his hip and the mirror propped so she can get a good, long look. He tells her another tale in a low tone, of just how he plans to thoroughly ravish her in this very bed and her tongue darts out to wet her lips when he describes spreading her thighs to feast on her delectable quim and making her scream his name so loudly the whole bloody town will hear just how well he _satisfies_ their Saviour.

(he'd trade his ship a thousand times over to hear her voice right now)

He falls asleep at last with the mirror set carefully on the empty pillow next to him, tilted so that they can see each other in the night and his lone hand curled protectively around it.


	13. want, take, have

**this was written for the prompt of dominant!Emma in canon, and is set during 6A after she and Killian have moved in together.**

* * *

 **want, take, have**

There's an itch under her skin.

It's familiar…an _urge_ to escape that had sent her running from foster care and group homes…a _rush_ after slipping something into her bag when the cashier's back was turned and walking out without paying…an _ache_ between her legs that wouldn't be satisfied by her own hand or some quality time with a handheld shower head.

It _needs_ to be scratched.

But Emma Swan is not fifteen anymore and Storybrooke is home now, a real home, with a family (a mom, a dad, a brother, everything she ever wanted) and there's too much at stake now to pack a bag and take off in the middle of the night (even though somethings she dreams of doing just that, old habits and all that jazz). She's got a savings account and a credit card and she can buy candy and lipstick without needing to lift it (besides, she's sheriff now and it would be awkward as fuck to get caught shoplifting in the town's lone drugstore) her days as a thief are behind her and she doesn't miss it, not really.

 _But…._

She used to shimmy into tight jeans and slick her lips with red gloss on a Saturday night, curl her hair and find a dive bar and a bad boy with a good pickup line. The kind who'd buy her a shot and a beer, and let her bum a cigarette and insist on lighting for her with his hands cupped around hers to keep the flame lit. Emma never bothered with playing hard to get, she knew what she wanted and she took it, boldly running her fingers up the inside of a denim-clad thigh in darkened booths and hearing the hitch in breath as she finally palmed a rapidly hardening erection and gave it a good squeeze. They take her home, but she takes what she needs and pushes each version of Mr. Right Now onto his back and doesn't let him up again until she's satisfied, leaving each one marked with her lipstick on his neck (among other… _areas_ ) and her nail marks in his shoulders. It scratches the itch, eases the ache…

For a little while.

Killian is the one who suggests a night out, a night off from trying to fix what seems to be perpetually broken and with Henry at Regina's and the growing burn in her belly she agrees almost at once. She _needs_ to feel something other than completely useless with the Evil Queen slipping through her grasp again and again, and he's always been good at giving her what she needs. So she slicks her lips with gloss dug from the depths of an old makeup bag and shimmies into something tight, alone in the bedroom they now share while he waits downstairs. Their first date had been about _romance_ , pink dresses and red roses and candlelight, just what she needed then, but _this_ …this is red lips and black lace and the way his Adam's apple bobs heavily in his throat when she comes down the stairs on fuck-me heels that make her legs look a million miles long. He's a bad boy in leather, and he takes her to a dive bar down by the docks where the tables are scarred and fights regularly break out but no one ever calls the police. All heads turn when they enter, the women eyeing him in a way that makes Emma mark her territory by showily sliding a hand into the back pocket of his jeans and giving his ass a bit of a squeeze while the men nod and gruffly call him Captain. He's clearly _Hook_ here, not Killian, and she's not the Saviour, of the Sheriff, not tonight. She's a woman with an itch that needs to be scratched and his knowing smile tells her that this evening won't end with a single kiss outside her door and an empty bed at the top of the stairs.

They drink (rum, natch) and flirt like strangers and when she comes back from the washroom to find another blonde trying to get too close to _her_ pirate there's a flare of heat in her chest that makes her cheeks flush and amusement in his eyes when she steps neatly between them to mould herself to him, sliding a foot up his calf and bracing her hands on his chest.

"Did you miss me, _Captain?"_

Killian winks at her, hook at the small of her back and something hard pressed to her stomach that makes her knees weak and her toes curl in the skyscraper heels.

"Always, love."

There's a snort from behind them that they both ignore and the blonde stomps away, Emma thinks that she must be from the Land of Untold Stories cause there's no way anyone who knows who they are would think they stood a chance of stealing him away now. He's hers, for the night (for forever) and she has _no_ intention of sharing. She wraps her fingers in the silver chain around his neck and angles her hips in his embrace in a way that makes his nostrils flare and his eyes darken with a gathering storm. A smile curves her red lips and she turns, leading him out the door by his necklace while a few whistles are thrown their way and a man at a table full of sailors calls out over his beer, "Good evening to you then, Captain!"

Emma feels his palm slide over her hip and the heat of him at her back (he's hers and she's his) and he answers back in a jaunty tone, "Aye lads, a _very_ fine evening indeed."

They slip into the darkness of a nearby alley and his lips are hot on her neck while he ruts shamelessly against the heel of her hand, his erection strains against his fly and the itch is a _burn_ , a fire kindling in the scrape of his beard on her skin and the slip of the hook under the hem of her dangerously short skirt.

(black leather, cause why should he have all the fun?)

She pushes him to his knees and he looks up at her from under his dark lashes, he's the captain but she's calling the shots tonight and she tangles her fingers in the chain again and spreads her legs. The skirt rides up to reveal lace-topped thigh highs and nothing else, a black eyebrow quirks and his low rumble makes her stomach clench and sends another bolt of desire right to where he's staring with those too-blue eyes.

"Hidden treasure…the finest in all the land."

Emma likes the pirate talk, she's always found it a turn on even when she wouldn't admit it on pain of death, but right now she needs him to do something else with his clever mouth and he's always been good at giving her what she needs. With another tug on the chain he buries his face eagerly between her thighs, sucking and licking while her head falls back against the wall behind her and she stares up at the night sky. She feels like she's _flying_ , away from this fucked-up town and the destiny that's slowly taking control of her life. It's been slipping through her fingers more and more with each tremble and shake, but her hand is steady now as she grips his hair and rides his face with a leg slung over his shoulder. Emma feels more than hears his groan, his tongue tracing circles that has her seeing stars even when her eyes close and her orgasm steals her breath. Killian kisses her sensitive clit as she comes down from the high and leans back, sitting on his heels with glistening lips and a smug look But she still needs _more_ and she takes him home in a swirl of magic that wraps around them like silk (now there's an idea) and right into their bedroom. He leans in to kiss her but she stops him with her fingers on his lips, dragging them over the curve and tasting herself when she brings them back to her mouth and flicks her tongue over her fingertips. She's not quite ready to mess up her lip gloss (yet) so she blows him an air kiss instead and drags the tip of her nail along his jaw.

"Strip."

He obeys without question, hand working the buttons of his vest and shirt with a dexterity born of centuries of experience. Emma enjoys the show, enjoys the power that she wields with her short skirt and see-through shirt that has his heart racing when she presses her palm against his bare chest and he gets a new eyeful of her swelling cleavage in the black lace bra. He's rock hard, heat rolling off him and hook twitching against his muscular thigh. Emma imagines it ripping through her underwear and pinning her wrists to the bed (next time) he's lean but he's strong, long, firm arms and broad shoulders that she loves to lay her head against when they sit on the couch and watch TV. Even with the heels he's still taller, but she leaves them on and the stockings too while making him watch as she shimmies leather down her thighs and flicks open her bra.

"Fuck, _Emma."_

It's ground out between gritted teeth when she ties him to the bed, conjuring silk ropes in the same shade of red as her lip gloss. She needs to hear it again, needs him to need her, needs to be the itch under _his_ skin the same way he is for her. His eyes never leave her as she tongues his nipples to hard points and scratches her nails down his stomach a little bit too deep, shivering and quivering until he's practically whimpering with need and she's as slick and damp as she can ever remember being. Emma knows that she could take him right to the hilt right now but before she straddles his hips and does just that she leans down and places a kiss above his heart, leaving behind a perfect imprint in red gloss.

 _Mine._

She shares everything else in her life, her son with Regina, her parents with her brother, but this is hers and hers alone. He gives her back the control that's been wrenched away by fate, the fearsome _Captain Hook_ laid out flat and completely at her mercy. It's just what she needs and she takes what he offers, bracing her hands on his shoulders and sinking down on him in one long stroke of hard against soft. The cords on his neck stick out and he pulls on the ropes, seeking the leverage he doesn't have in this position. Her name is a sigh, a plea, and she sets a quick pace that he quickly matches with the rock of his hips. He's always been more than a match for her, filling the empty spaces and easing the ache that she pretends isn't there, the one in her soul that none of the dozen or so Mr. Right Nows ever touched.

Killian manages to find the spot that has her gasping even with his arms and legs tied to the bed, bracing his feet on the footboard and bending his knees. It doesn't take long for the pressure to build low in her stomach and she can tell he's close too, sweat gathering in the hollows of his collarbones and beading on his brow. Her nails leave marks in his shoulders and he hisses at the pain even as his face contorts in pleasure. The dam breaks and magic tingles under her tongue, pinpricks of sensation rippling like goosebumps while he pulses and jerks inside of her. Emma collapses, the ropes dissolving and his arms wrapping around her as she presses her nose to his neck.

On those Saturday nights she would get dressed and leave right about now with her itch scratched and a phone number she never calls pressed into her palm. But this is her home and the one lying next to her with her lipstick on his skin and her scratches on his shoulders isn't Mr. Right Now, a bad boy with a good pickup line…he's Mr. Right, Killian Jones, a good man who knows how to play the bad boy when she needs it.

"I love you, Emma."

She curls into him, boneless and limp and _happy._

"I love you too."

The sweat cools on her skin and he pulls the blanket over them, draping his arm over her and rubbing his thumb in slow circles on the small of her back. The itch is gone, scratched _and_ soothed. For now, at least, but she knows who to turn to the next time she needs a hand.


	14. playing footy

**Inspired by a certain dark-haired Irishman playing in a charity soccer game.**

* * *

 **playing footy**

"You owe me _big_ time for this."

Elsa tossed her gym bag in the backseat and climbed a bit awkwardly into the Bug, pulling the door shut behind her, "Believe me, Emma, I will make it up to you, I promise."

Emma threw the car into gear and started to back out, not even bothering to check for oncoming traffic. There was no oncoming traffic, it was six am on a Saturday and the streets were completely deserted. As well they should be, because who aside from her somewhat uptight roommate was up at six am on a Saturday? Emma hadn't been, not after she'd only come home to their shared apartment less than five hours earlier after another fruitless stakeout for her latest skip. She'd been sleeping very well in her flannel pyjamas and the eyeliner she hadn't bothered to wipe off when Elsa had burst into her room and woke her up, explaining breathlessly that her car wouldn't start and she needed a ride. She would have just given her the keys but Elsa couldn't drive stick, so Emma had thrown her hair up in a messy topknot and quickly swapped the pyjamas for yoga pants and a tank while Elsa paced outside the bathroom and called for her to hurry.

She fumbled in her own bag for her sunglasses as she drove, swearing under her breath when she remembered that they were sitting on top of her dresser. It was too fucking early, and if Elsa wasn't her best friend in addition to being her roommate, she would still be sleeping peacefully instead of squinting into the rising sun and praying there would be an open Starbucks somewhere on the way to the park where Elsa's adult recreational soccer team held their practices three times a week. She'd tried to get Emma to sign up with her, but while Emma enjoyed the Monday evening boxing classes they did together at the Y, she wasn't getting up at six am to go kick around a ball and get grass stains on all her T-shirts. Soccer was for kids, anyway, David and Mary Margaret's kid played soccer and Mary Margaret was the perfect soccer mom with her cooler all neatly packed with orange slices and Gatorade for every game, along with a Thermos of herbal tea for herself. Emma was more into lime wedges and tequila than oranges and tea, although when she parked her Bug and got out with the giant Starbucks cup (venti latte with an extra shot cause it was fucking six am and a sprinkle of cinnamon on top) that Elsa had bought for her clutched in her hand, she had to admit that maybe she'd been a little _too_ quick to judge. Elsa's team was co-ed, and it looked like there was some definite eye candy among them running around on the field. Including the one who was jogging towards them with a welcoming smile, dark hair, slim hips in white athletic shorts and a blue T-shirt that matched his eyes.

"You'll find it a tad difficult to play footy in those, love."

Emma looked down at her shoes, she'd grabbed them while still half-asleep and saw that they were the fuck-me heels she'd worn to the bar last night in hopes of luring her skip in with the tried and true honey trap, instead of the flip-flops she'd meant to wear.

"Footy?" she repeated, confused, watching Tall, Dark and Handsome's (cause he definitely _was_ ) smile grow wider.

"Football," he explained, stressing the word and she suddenly woke up a bit more and realized that he had an English accent, "You know, the game where you kick a black and white ball with your foot? I pity the poor ball who falls afoul of those, you're liable to stab it right to death."

"Emma's not playing, she just gave me a ride today cause my car wouldn't start," Elsa piped in, pulling her own sneakers out of her gym bag, "Killian, this is my roommate, Emma Swan. Emma, this is Killian Jones."

"That's _Captain_ Jones, if you please, Elsa."

Elsa rolled her eyes, _"Killian_ is the team captain."

"Nice to meet you, Killian."

Emma stuck out her free hand and his smile went a bit tight-lipped while he gave a shrug, looking down his arm. She followed his eyes and saw that he had a cuff of some kind on his wrist and below it was...nothing. He was missing his left hand. Elsa had not mentioned the hot English captain of her soccer team at all, let alone the one-handed hot English captain of her soccer team. Emma might have forgotten her sunglasses, and mistook stilettos for flip flops, but the caffeine must have woken her up enough to seamlessly switch the Starbucks to her other hand so he could shake her left hand with his right.

"The pleasure is all mine, Emma Swan."

She felt his thumb brush the inside of her wrist and then he pulled back, gesturing to a set of bleachers next to the field and inviting her to sit and watch their practice.

"You don't have to Emma, I can catch a ride home with someone, or take the bus."

Emma watched Killian kick a soccer ball towards a sandy-haired man who was sitting on the grass with a jaunty call of, _"On your feet for the captain!"_ that sent a pleasant tingle right down her spine.

"Well, since I'm already up, might as well stick around for a bit."

Just before the practice started in earnest Killian looked over at the bleachers and when their eyes met his lips pulled up in a grin and he actually _winked_.

 _Cheeky_ , one-handed hot English captain of the soccer team. Or footy.

Whatever.

Emma watched them run sprints up and down the field, following Elsa's platinum blonde braid for a while before her gaze would slip over to Killian's dark hair. Sprints gave way to maneuvering the ball down a line of orange cones, weaving it around them before kicking it into the net. Some of the players were slower than others, it was just a recreational league, after all, but when it was Killian's turn Emma could tell that he clearly knew what he was doing, even though she knew jack shit about soccer. The ball was a blur between his feet, and he didn't just kick the ball into the net, he tipped it up with his foot and then head-butted it right into the net.

Cheeky, _show-off_ hot one-handed English soccer captain.

 _Ridiculously_ hot, even in dorky white athletic shorts and his socks pulled up almost to his knees. Emma wished she'd brushed out her hair and put on some lipgloss, but at least a quick check using her phone as a mirror showed that her leftover eyeliner actually looked pretty good and at least she'd chosen a fitted, scoop-necked tank that showed off her cleavage when she unzipped her hoodie just a little bit more.

She swore Killian did a double-take the next time he ran past her, once they'd split into two groups and started playing an actual game. A few minutes later he scored, kicking the ball high into the net and raising both arms in celebration. Elsa and the sandy-haired man both gave him hugs and claps on the back, and Emma lifted her Starbucks cup and gave him a nod when his gaze met hers again, her own smile lifting her lips.

Killian's group won, although Elsa had also scored a goal for the other side that had her usually pale face flushed with pride and Emma cheering from the bleachers. Her roommate was normally the shy, anxious type, so Emma was shocked when she actually pulled off her shirt Brandi Chastain-style and brandished it over her head, leaving her in nothing but her shorts and ice-blue sports bra.

"Okay, now _that_ was worth getting up at the asscrack of dawn for," Emma said when the game wrapped up and Elsa jogged over with a water bottle in hand a towel slung around her neck.

"It was my first goal!" Elsa beamed.

"Good form!"

Killian Jones joined them, pulling up his own T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face and revealing toned abs and a happy trail that disappeared into his shorts. Emma really, really wished she hadn't forgotten her sunglasses when he dropped the shirt back down and caught her looking.

Cheeky, show-off, _smirking_ hot one-handed English soccer captain.

Another group was taking the field while they talked, a different league with American footballs and helmets under their arms instead of soccer balls and shin guards. Emma heard a few snide comments about soccer being nothing but a kid's game, and even though she'd thought the same thing herself only about an hour ago she felt herself scowl alongside Killian. One of them tossed a football to another with his back to them, pretending to kick the ground as if her was kicking a soccer ball and then turning to laugh along with his asshole friends. Emma felt the breath catch in her throat at the sight of his face.

It was her skip.

The empty Starbucks cup and her fuck-me heels all went flying and she heard a startled exclamation of, _"Emma!"_ but she was already sprinting down the grass on bare feet, running full out and tackling the guy from behind. He started yelling, and then his friends started yelling and the next thing Emma knew she was surrounded on all sides by people from Elsa's soccer league, including the sandy-haired man who had one of the football players in a headlock and a seriously pissed-off looking Killian Jones.

"Watch it, mate," he hissed, pushing another one of the skip's friends back when he tried to get to close to where she had him pinned to the ground with a knee in his back.

It took a little while to get everything straightened out, Elsa called David with Emma's phone while Killian and the man whose name she quickly learned was Robin kept the skip's friends at bay with the help of the rest of the soccer players. By the time David showed up with Graham to take the man into custody (he was crying and had snot dripping down his face by then, a far cry from the smooth-talking con artist who had defrauded several women by romancing them and then opening up credit cards and loans in their names behind their backs) and the paperwork had all been filled in to get Emma her bounty for catching him, it was nearly noon.

"Well," Emma said to Elsa, gulping down water from a bottle that Killian had silently handed her after Arthur had been bundled into the back of David's squad car, "I guess I owe _you_ big time, since I've been trying to track down that jerk for weeks without success."

"You can start buy buying me lunch at Granny's. I'm starving."

Her own stomach rumbled and she nodded, suddenly famished as well, "You're on."

"Any way I can talk you into joining my team? Cause if you can chase down a ball like you just chased him down… _wow_. That was something else. Just who are you, Swan?"

She was used to guys who found what she did for a living weird and off-putting, having a hard time imagining a hot blonde could successfully chase down scumbag bail jumpers. Emma felt her hackles rise and she shot back, "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Perhaps I would."

But he didn't seem weirded out or put off, if anything, he seemed...sincere. And from the way he was looking at her while Elsa packed her gym bag...Emma glanced down and saw that his dorky white athletic shorts weren't quite baggy enough to hide a clear sign that he really, really, wasn't put off by it at all.

They all wound up at Granny's for lunch, Emma, Elsa, Killian and Robin, who were friends outside the league and had also shared a car to the park that morning. They'd changed into clean T-shirts and track pants to wear into the diner and Elsa had swapped her sneakers for the flip flops in her gym bag, but Emma was still stuck in her stilettoes.

Stilettoes that ran teasingly up and down Killian's calf under the table, making his Adam's apple bob in his throat and those blue eyes darken to a dangerous glint that made Emma's nipples tighten to hard points under her tank top and her pulse surge between her legs.

She might know jack shit about footy, but she was pretty _damn_ good at footsie, if she did say so herself.

Elsa's car was fixed by the following Saturday, but it was Killian who drove her to practice at six am. It only made sense, since he'd stayed over the previous night in their apartment, in Emma's bed after their date, those slim hips positioned square between her thighs and that happy trail pressed to her stomach. His one hand made her see stars while that English accent whispered the most deliciously dirty things in her ear, a smirk crossing his face when she fell apart underneath him.

She got him back though, pressing her feet to the firm curve just under his ass and calling him _"Captain"_ while she squeezed her inner muscles around him. His whole body seized and jerked in her arms, dark head falling to her shoulder and a shudder ripping through him along with a low cry of, _"Bloody fucking hell, Emma."_

Oh yeah, she owed Elsa _big t_ ime for this, that was for sure.


	15. skinny dip

**Neverland UST, where things are heating up between a certain pirate and saviour.**

* * *

 **skinny dip**

The heat was unbearable.

Emma had lived for two years in Florida, where humidity turned everything, her hair, her skin, into a sticky mess while she worked shitty minimum wage jobs that barely paid the rent and tried (and frequently failed) not to go back to her old life of shoplifting and picking pockets. She'd spent months in Arizona, where 100 degree days were the norm and she was both pregnant and incarcerated, carrying a baby she didn't want to want so bad and a sentence she didn't deserve and had literally dreamed of snowcones and ice cream for weeks on end, it was so hot and she was so uncomfortable in her prison scrubs and growing belly.

But nothing compared to Neverland.

Sweat beaded along her hairline and dripped between her breasts morning, noon and night. Her lungs felt like they were filled with water half the time and her feet itched constantly in her boots. Hook was insistent that she take them off and dry her socks by the fire every night, muttering under his breath about sailors who had lost toes to gangrene when they neglected to take proper care of their feet.

There was heat in his gaze when he looked at her, as heavy as the air around them and making her heart beat faster while her pulse surged between her legs and she didn't dream of wrapping her lips around cherry Popsicles, but of another tasty treat instead that was hard and pink and would melt right in her mouth.

"Aren't you hot?"

It came out like an accusation and Hook flinched a little, glancing away while Emma scratched at her arm and felt like a bitch. He'd spent years, _centuries_ here and he didn't have to come back, but he had for reasons that went unspoken but were hinted at whenever he looked at her while Regina was planning to skewer Lost Boys or her father was helping her set up camp.

"You get used to it," he said, one shoulder lifting in a shrug.

She never did get used to the Florida weather, far from the beaches and palm trees she'd imagined in a motel room with a man whose absence was tangled round her heart like one of the vines that wrapped around the trees and snaked across the jungle floor. Neal was Baelfire, which meant his mother was Milah, the woman whose name was hidden under the heavy leather sleeve.

Maybe he wasn't used to it, maybe he just didn't want the others to see.

When her socks were finally dry that night and her mother and Regina were trading memories of Henry's childhood by the fire, memories that Emma would never share and that she both wanted to hear and didn't, didn't want to think of the ten years she lost and would never get back, Hook bade her to put her boots back on and muttered something to David that Emma didn't hear but made him look at her and then at her mother before he nodded at the pirate with an expression she couldn't quite read.

She followed Hook silently through the tress, not really wanting to go but unable to stay and listen to the women who had raised her son and were more of a family together than she was with them, even though they had literally tried to kill each other more than once. This was her fucked up life, lost in a fairy tale where her mother was Snow White and her father was Prince Charming and she was having sex dreams about Captain Hook on Neverland while Rumpelstiltskin was running around doing God knows what and Peter Pan had kidnapped her son.

The ground was literally steaming, like the asphalt in the prison yard used to. Her hand rested on her flat belly over her shirt, thinking of the memories only she knew. The day she had felt that first kick, a tiny flutter just under her navel. The cravings for Rocky Road ice cream and the baby book she'd checked out from the library and then couldn't bring herself to read.

"Here. The water comes down from the mountain and it's clean enough for drinking, we used to fill the casks at this pool and haul them back to the _Jolly_."

Hook gestured towards the small clearing he had led her to, where a waterfall poured through the rocks into a perfect little pool that looked like something out of a travel magazine. He hung the lantern he was carrying on a tree branch and the light rippled gold across the black water.

"If you want to cool off for a bit, I'll go over to the other side and keep watch. Don't worry, Swan, I won't look."

She knew he wasn't lying but she still gave him a skeptical look, more out of habit than anything. The close quarters they were living under on the island meant that modesty sometimes went out the window, she'd caught a few glimpses of him dressing behind the trees in the hazy pre-dawn while the rest of the group was still sleeping.

"Riiight," she drawled, and his lips quirked in amusement.

"Although I can't promise that any Lost Boys secreted in the vicinity won't get an eyeful, I'm afraid. The little buggers have caught me in nought but my skin a few times, rather awkward to have to fight them off in flagrante. You, on the other hand, I'm sure they'll be too busy gawking to even reach for their knives."

There it was again, the thing that lay between them that they both were dancing around under David's suspicion and Regina's bitching and Mary Margaret's concern. But they were all back by the campsite and Emma was too hot to care about Lost Boys playing Peeping Tom in the trees or even Hook seeing her naked right now, he saw more than he should with those bright blue eyes anyway.

"We call it skinny dipping where I'm from."

His eyes went dark when she peeled off the gray tank and dropped it to the ground, followed by boots and socks and pants. Her underwear was nothing to write home about, a cotton bra and undies that she was going to burn when she got back home, but she saw the flush on his cheeks that was not from the heat and the way his single hand twitched at his side while she reached behind her back to flick open the clasp. Hook turned then, so quickly that the leather snapped against his knees as he put his back to her and Emma smiled, feeling her own flush of feminine pride. Even though she was a sweaty mess she hadn't missed the way his jaw had pulled tight when he looked at her, and if they hadn't been stuck on this godforsaken island with her parents and a lifetime's worth of baggage (or several, in his case) then maybe she would have jumped him a long time ago, put that eloquent tongue to better uses between her legs and scratched her nails down his muscular back without the heavy leather in the way.

The water was deliciously cool and she let out a low sound when she waded in that was echoed softly behind her. It swirled over her thighs and kissed the damp curls of her pubic hair the way _he_ would if she said the word. She felt herself relax, the tension and worry draining away somewhat as the sweat and grime was washed away. Her nipples hardened to tight points and she flipped onto her back, tipping her head and letting her hair soak while she floated with her eyes closed.

"Are you coming in or not?"

Emma lifted her head and met his gaze head on where he stood next to the pool, so close and so far. He'd promised not to look, but unlike all the other broken promises in her life, _love, home, family_ , she didn't care about this one. They all looked at her differently, Regina, Gold. her parents, Neal, before he died...but no one looked at her the way he did.

She wanted him to look.

She wanted him to _see_.

He gave a single, reluctant shake of his head, "You and I both know what will happen if I come in there, Swan."

She knew that she'd wrap her legs around his slim hips and that his mouth would be hot on her breasts, she knew that he would make her come with his fingers under the water before he finally slipped inside, she knew that she'd leave teeth marks in his bare shoulder and that any lurking Lost Boys would get one hell of a show that just might finally turn them into Lost Men.

She knew.

Hook didn't say a word when she came out of the water, turning his back again to let her squeeze the water from her hair while the lingering warmth in the air had her dry enough in mere minutes to get dressed again. Emma felt a faint flush of embarrassment for throwing herself at him like that, his rejection stinging more than she wanted to admit.

 _Lost Girl._

Fingers suddenly lifted her chin and she blinked, she'd been too caught up in her thoughts to notice his approach. His thumb traced the line of her jaw and she shivered even as she felt the heat rolling off of him in waves. Neverland was unbearably hot, more than Florida, more than Arizona, but she suddenly wanted someone to keep her warm.

He hung the lantern off his hook this time and reached out with his hand, fingers wiggling in the air between them. Emma reached out and took it, following behind as he led her back through the trees, towards the campsite.

"Thank you."

Hook paused when she whispered the words, his fingers squeezing hers gently.

"So...fought off Lost Boys naked, huh?"

His white teeth flashed in a smile and he began to recount a tale she most certainly _didn't_ remember from the Disney movie, of getting caught bathing and having to dodge arrows, "While trying to protect a rather large _area_ of my anatomyin particular, if you catch my drift."

The innuendo was back but things had shifted between them again, and the simple weight of his hand in hers was a reminder that she felt the rest of the night, lying in her makeshift bed with the knowledge that he was only a few feet away and they both knew what would happen the next time they were alone.


	16. escape (the pina colada song)

**A season seven based CS AU - just a little spoilery for Killian and Regina's new identities in Seattle, but nothing major.**

* * *

 **escape (the pina colada song)**

Monday is Pina Colada Night at Roni's, when the bartenders all wear plastic flower leis and serve $3 drink specials and half-price appetizers to help drum up business on what's usually the slowest night of the week.

John Rogers hates rum, hates bars, but he gets dragged along with the 8 p.m shift change that is as predictable as the tide. Clock out, change from uniform to civilian clothes, and go get shitfaced. Wednesdays at the Irish pub for Guinness and darts, Fridays at that place with a DJ and dancefloor and girls who like cops (in _that_ way that just makes him vaguely ill), and Mondays at Roni's.

She's got the heat on even though they're in the middle of an Indian summer, to add to the "tropical" atmosphere (and, he suspects, to sell even more of the ice-cold drinks) but he leaves his black cotton jacket on while the rest of his co-workers are knocking back vast quantities of rum and pineapple juice in T-shirts and shorts. He's never quite fit in with the rest of them, his accent marking him as an outsider every time he opens his mouth (which isn't often, when he's not on duty) and he nurses his single drink and counts down the minutes until he can make his exit without anyone noticing. He just needs to wait until his partner, Chalmers, finds the girl he's going to hit on and probably go home with at the end of the night. Chalmers was everything John was not, a smooth-talker with the ladies who'd been nicknamed "Prince Charming" back at the precinct for his ability to charm his way into the beds of the fairer sex. Roni was a rare holdout, rolling her eyes at Chalmers's pick up lines and telling him just where he could shove his so-called charm.

"I've met a real prince charming or two back in my day, and believe me, you don't even come close."

Roni's not his friend, not exactly, but anyone who tells off his arrogant prick of a partner is fine by him.

"Hey, Rogers, check out the blonde who just walked in. Never seen her in here before."

John looks up from his phone and the fishing game he was playing to pass the time (one of these days he was going to buy his own boat, he even has a picture of a tall ship set as his wallpaper) and squints in the direction Chalmers was pointing. She was facing away from to them, and all he could see was long blonde hair hanging down a slim back and a fantastic arse in a pair of tight jeans. Perfect, she was just his partner's type and once Chalmers was distracted enough by her, John would leave a healthy tip for Roni and head back to his own small flat a few blocks away.

Alone.

The way he likes it.

Roni brings a fresh round to their table and accepts the bills Chalmers hands her to send a pina colada to the mystery blonde. His fishing game beeped in his hand, but John finds himself watching as she makes her way through the crowd with the gift and taps the woman on her shoulder. Chalmers sits up straighter beside him, pasting on a toothy grin when Roni gestures towards him, her lips moving as she obviously explains that he had sent over the drink. It was an opening gambit that didn't always work, some women were reluctant to accept drinks from strange men in bars, but Chalmers elbows him painfully in the ribs when she takes the glass and slips the red straw between her lips. John feels the breath catch in his throat, even from across the room he can see that she's a stunningly beautiful woman. He suddenly wishes that he had sent her the drink, even though he never hits on women in bars. His utter lack of any kind of love or sex life was near daily cannon fodder to both his partner and fellow cops, barbed jabs lobbed back and forth in the bullpen that he ignores for the most part.

"Wish me luck, not that I'll need it."

"Good luck mate," he says automatically, lying though his teeth. He wishes for Chalmers to get eaten by the inflatable crocodile that always hangs above the bar on Pina Colada Night, a grinning pool toy that sports oversized novelty sunglasses and a straw hat instead. The blonde has been swallowed up by the crowd and Chalmers leaves the table to find her, John eyes the path to the door, it's hot, he hates rum, and bars, and he longs for the cool quiet of his flat, with the ship in the bottle that he bought at the flea market sitting on his nightstand and the new swan-feather pillow that is supposed to help him sleep. He doesn't sleep much, and when he does he has the strangest dreams.

"Hey."

John looks up at the voice and blinks in surprise to see the blonde standing by his table, drink in hand. She's wearing a white T-shirt that is slightly transparent under the lights (he's a man, he notices) and a strange necklace, a silver chain with two little charms hanging just above her breasts. One is a skull and the other is a dagger, it looks like something a pirate would wear on the high seas, not a gorgeous (and single? maybe? was he that lucky?) blonde in the middle of Seattle. She holds the glass in her right hand and the left is behind her back, jammed in the pocket of her jeans. John can't see if she's wearing a wedding ring and he suddenly, desperately hopes that she's _not._

"Thanks for the drink."

He feels his eyes widen and a flush in his cheeks, she thought _he_ had sent her the pina colada? A quick glance over her shoulder shows him that Roni has detained Chalmers, he's got his back to them and Roni's dark gaze meets John's for a moment before she goes back to whatever it is she's saying. The bar owner is not his friend, but she hates his partner and he realizes that she's keeping Chalmers occupied so that _he_ can talk to the blonde instead. Panic wells up in him, he's not good at this, he's never been good at this, and he has no bloody clue what to do or say.

"You're very welcome, love."

The endearment slips out before he can stop it and a smile lifts her lips that makes his heart miss a beat.

"Come here often?" she asks, with a hint of something he can't quite decipher behind the question.

"Not nearly often enough, since this is the first time I've ever seen you."

He's no Prince Charming, but he surprises himself with the line that make her lovely face blush behind her curtain of hair that reminds him of the yellow buttercups in his neighbour's windowbox, the ones that he always stops and looks at for a moment on his way to work in the morning.

She leaves with him, stepping out into the perpetual Seattle drizzle that has her white T-shirt going even more see-through in moments, but John Rogers is an officer and a gentleman and he gives her his black cotton jacket to wear, after she pulls him to her by the lapels and kisses him soundly in the shadows of the alley next to Roni's.

He hates rum, but he loves the taste of it from her mouth, all sugar and spice and pineapple juice. It's sweet and tart and he just might start drinking it more often, especially if she drinks it with him.

He doesn't make it to darts at the pub next Wednesday, as soon as he clocks out he goes against the tide and buys both a bottle of Bacardi and a bunch of buttercups for his date with the woman who hasn't left his thoughts since Pina Colada Night. There's freshly washed sheets on his bed and an unopened pack of condoms tucked in the nightstand drawer under his ship in a bottle.

A man can dream, after all, and John thinks that Emma Jones moving to Seattle from some little town in Maine he can't remember the name of is a dream come true.


	17. the men they want to be

this one is more Captain Charming - David notices a surprising change in his son (in-law) as Killian and Emma prepare to welcome their first child (canon compliant)

* * *

 **the men they want to be**

For a man who regularly walked around a small fishing village in Maine in tight leather pants and eyeliner, Killian Jones could be _remarkably_ subtle when he wanted to be.

But David noticed the change.

Killian turned down a beer during Sunday dinner on the farm, waving the offered bottle away with a winked, _"Not tonight, mate, thanks."_ and stuck to water instead. They ran into each other at the grocery store a few days later (again, Storybrooke was pretty damn small) and chatted amiably while David bought juice boxes and Oreos for Neal's school lunches, pushing carts and crisscrossing each other to pick items off the shelves and talking about his plans to build a new chicken coop in the spring and Killian and Emma's upcoming trip to Portland to buy things not available in town for the baby.

David was thrilled to become a grandfather again, and this time he'd actually be there from the beginning, the way he was supposed to be. He hadn't told Emma yet, but he'd already talked to the woman who owned the stables down the road from his farm about getting a pony for the little prince or princess to be, teaching his grandchild to ride like he should have done with Emma, with Henry, back in the Enchanted Forest. That life was long gone, more dream than memory at times, but not entirely forgotten.

Killian filled his own cart with orange juice and yogurt, hot chocolate mix and frozen pizza, consulting the list on the phone propped up in the cart's seat and bypassing the aisle with beer and wine completely. They went their separate ways in the parking lot, waving to each other before getting in their respective vehicles and each heading home to a wife and a love they had both literally died for.

Worth it, and he'd do it again in a heartbeat.

He knew his son ( _in-law_ ) felt the same.

It nagged at him afterwards, pulling at the back of his mind during the dart tournament down at the Rabbit Hole when Killian ordered pitcher after pitcher of beer for their table and flipped a gold coin over his knuckles to pay for them all, a showy display that had the rest of the team cheering and clapping. But he never poured a glass for himself all night and every drink that made its way in front of him was passed along to someone else. Then there was dinner at the Italian place for Snow's birthday, where Emma drank ginger ale and Killian ordered one too, and the lack of rum in the usual place in their cupboard when David was over at their house one weekend to help paint the nursery and went rummaging around for a clean mug.

"You've given up drinking completely, haven't you?

He said it leaning casually on the rail of the _Jolly Roger,_ looking out at the horizon in the distance and not at the man standing next to him, the pirate with a wedding ring on his finger and a glass of decidedly non-alcoholic lemonade in his hand.

Killian shrugged, patting his jacket over the inner breast pocket with his hook. "Don't even carry the flask anymore."

"My father drank too much." David mused. It's a dark memory between them, but his daughter and her husband are not the only ones who've left the past and all its scars, and neither of them stiffen at the mention of the man long dead in another life.

"Mine too."

It's not a surprising admission, and depressingly common in the land they came from. But things are different here.

"You'll be a good father, Killian."

The hook tapped against the wood in a steady rhythm, his voice going quiet. "I want...I want to be better than he was. I _have_ to be better than he was, for Emma, and the babe."

"You will," David reassured him, "You'll be better than I was, too."

Killian looked up in shock at that, turning to face him and now it was David's turn to shrug.

"I wasn't a drinker, but I sent my daughter away against my better judgement, sacrificed her happiness for twenty-eight years."

"David, you had no choice."

"Maybe," David said, remembering a day when he let a door fall shut, "But it's something I can never make up for. You know, Snow and I used to talk about going back to the Enchanted Forest and reclaiming the kingdom one day...but then there'd be the inevitable treaties and alliances to keep the peace and there's no way in hell I'm pushing my son into an arranged marriage with some duke's daughter he doesn't even know, not now. I gave up one child for the greater good, I'm not doing it again. If we went back, I'd be a bad king."

"But a good father," Killian pointed out.

"And I'd much rather be that."

David took a sip of his own lemonade. The old adage seemed particularly apt at the moment. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. He wasn't Prince Charming or a king, not anymore, but he was a husband and a father and a grandfather (a young, cool, grandpa) and that was more than enough for plain David Nolan.

"Aye, well…a pirate who doesn't drink isn't much of a pirate. Especially when the last thing I plundered wasn't gold or jewels, it was the last slice of peach pie at Granny's from behind Leroy's back while he was trying to order it."

David snort-laughed at that, picturing the dwarf's outrage at being thwarted. Killian grinned, the sly smile of a pirate who had found treasure of a different sort before saying airily with a careless flick of his hook, "Emma had a craving."

And that explained it all. Killian's love for Emma was decidedly unsubtle, always had been (even when David had really, _really_ , not wanted to see it) and his love for the child they would welcome in a few months' time was as clear as the sky overhead and as deep as the ocean below.

David had noticed.


	18. family business

**Inspired by that picture Raphael posted on IG of Colin and Andrew having a "Goodfellas" moment together on set, I wrote a little CS/Captain Cobra modern Boston Mafia AU. Warning, this is a bit darker than some of my other stuff, but nothing graphic.**

* * *

 **family business**

Emma Swan knows her son. **  
**

 _Who_ he is.

 _What_ he is.

She knows the Gold family business is a front, a facade, for other, _unsavoury_ things. She knows about the guns, about the drugs, about the underage girls (after all she was one of them herself, once upon a time) she knows about the stacks of cash hidden in the walls and where the bodies are buried.

She knows.

She pretends she doesn't.

Henry pretends that he believes her.

It's not a bad life, being the mother of Boston's young and powerful mafia crown prince. It beats foster care or living on the streets or jail, that's for damn sure. She's got a nice house and a driver and a generous allowance, Henry is always home for dinner every Sunday night like clockwork (she pretends she doesn't see the flecks of blood under his nails when she passes him the salt) and she still turns plenty of heads when she goes shopping or out for a drink at upscale bars in trendy neighbourhoods, frequented by stockbrokers and the CEOs of tech start-ups, handsome, arrogant men with gym-hardened abs and soft, clean hands. Sometimes she goes home with one of them at the end of the night, drunkenly fumbling in the back of an Uber and then falling into bed, wondering in the back of her mind while they fuck her into the mattress with their breath hot on her neck and those clean hands roaming her curves what they'd think if they knew the truth about the hot blonde named Emma in the tight yet tasteful dress and Louboutin heels that they'd carelessly taken for a PR rep or a well-to-do divorcée. How she'd caught crime boss Robert Gold's then twenty-six year-old son Neal's eye as a fourteen-year-old runaway and been pregnant by him at fifteen, caught by the police in the shitty motel where he'd been keeping her as his girlfriend and filling her head with dreams that would never come true. How his father had gotten him out of the statutory rape charge like he'd probably done a dozen times before, with the judge assigned to the case firmly in his pocket and all the paperwork mysteriously "disappearing" before it could be filed in court. How Neal had been gunned down by enforcers for the rival Mills family and his death had ignited an all out war between the two factions that had only ended when matriarch Cora Mills's body had been discovered by her daughter Regina, seated upright at the dining room table of their elegant Beacon Hill manse without a hair out of place and a gaping hole in her chest, her heart neatly laid out on a silver platter set in front of her.

Emma runs into Regina from time to time around town, they do run in the same circles, after all, they're cooly polite to each other publicly but she knows the other woman still blames the Gold family for her mother's death, and Emma is the mother of Gold's sole heir, his only grandson, Henry. He'd magnanimously took them both in after Neal died, proclaiming her to be his beloved, bereaved daughter-in-law (even though she and Neal were never actually married, she knows now she was just a fling on the side and he was really engaged to a woman named Tamara the whole time) and Emma was too young then, too broke and too _broken_ to resist the most powerful man in the Boston underworld and the deal he offered with a crocodile's dangerous grin.

Her silence for her son's future.

She keeps quiet for Henry, for her only family, pretends that Neal was a hero and never says a word about the things he told her, about the true nature of his father's business, secrets let slip in the dead of night. She knows Gold's dirty, knows his son was too, knows things that could get her and her young son both killed. She knows, and Gold knows she knows, and she knows if she stays that Henry will inevitably turn into one of them too, like his father, like his grandfather, and she knows even before she accepts Gold's deal that it's already too late.

"Welcome the the family, dearie," Gold says, with that smile that sends a chill right down Emma's spine as she holds her son in her arms and watches his dark, cold eyes dart to Henry's small face, so like Neal's.

 _Too_ much like Neal's.

He just shows up late one night, talking quietly to her son in the front hall and Emma watches unseen from the landing above, hidden in the shadows. Dark hair and dark leather jacket, just another nameless, faceless associate standing with his back to her and she's about to go back to her bedroom and pretend she didn't see anything, didn't hear anything, when Henry suddenly disappears down the stairs into the basement and the man turns, standing with a hand in his pocket and the other resting on his thigh. Only it's not a hand, it's a hook, metal gleaming darkly and a curving into a point that looks wicked sharp. But the hardware aside, he's not a hatchet-faced goon like some of the other men who pay Henry clandestine late-night visits, he's a handsome bastard who wouldn't be out of place in any of the wine bars or cute bistros that Emma frequents where no one knows her family and she feels a flutter deep in her stomach and her pulse between her legs. As if he senses her presence he glances up, eyes narrowing in her direction and she freezes. His hand drifts around his waist to where he's probably got a gun stashed in the back of his pants and he takes a step forward, but then Henry is back with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and they leave together a few moments later. Emma notices the black gloves on her son's hands and the bulge in the back of the stranger's jacket (she was right, he's packing heat) and he glances back before he follows Henry out the door, searching the hall and then looking up again. This time she doesn't hide, moving into the light and taking hold of the oak railing as his gaze met hers. Surprise flashes on his face and she raises a brow, staring down at him while he stares up at her.

He doesn't say a word, hand on the doorknob. Only it's not the hand, it's the hook. He sees her looking at it, and of all things, he _winks_.

Killian Jones. Irish, not Boston Irish, but born and raised on the Emerald Isle itself. He introduces himself to Emma properly the following Sunday, showing up for dinner with Henry and Henry's girlfriend Jacinda. The hook is gone, replaced by a prosthetic hand that makes him look much more respectable. Only he's anything but respectable, Emma knows, just as she knows that Regina Mills in trying to encroach on Gold's territory down at the docks again and that Henry tossed a pair of blood-soaked gloves into the fireplace in the family room and burned them the morning after his middle of the night jaunt with his new business partner, as he calls him. Killian's dressed all in black again and he brought red roses for Henry's mother, a gift more suited for a lover than a hostess. Emma's wearing a pink belted dress that Jacinda compliments, it's soft and sweet (Emma was both those things once, she's not anymore) her hair up in a high ponytail that leaves her neck bare and exposed. Her son's hands are spotlessly clean, not a fleck of blood under his nails, but then again Jacinda is here and she's not family, not yet.

When she takes plates into the kitchen after dinner Killian helps, bringing the empty platter and the carving knife. Henry and Jacinda laugh from the other room and Emma smiles, happy that her son is happy, that his hands are clean tonight and she hasn't caught a glimpse of _Neal_ in his eyes all evening.

Her smile drops when she goes back with dessert and Henry is staring down at his phone with a frown on his lips. Jacinda sits quietly with her hands folded in her lap and downcast eyes, like Emma used to do with Neal. She's not family, not yet, but she _knows_.

"Sorry Mom," Henry offers when he looks up again. "Business."

He kisses her cheek and walks Jacinda to the door, knowing that Emma won't, can't protest what he's said. He's her son, but he's Neal's and Gold's, and this is the deal she made all those years ago to keep her family.

She feels Killian's presence behind her, close enough that his breath touches her neck. He was perfectly polite all through dinner, not like Peter, or Felix, two of her son's other associates who had the table manners of feral children. But polite is not the same thing as nice, Regina Mills is polite to Emma whenever they run into each other but she's never nice, and she has the sense that underneath Killian Jones's handsome face and smooth, accented voice he is far from nice.

Good.

"You'll watch his back?"

He inhales sharply at the question, even closer now, she can picture his nostrils flaring and the firm set of his stubbled jaw. Family is everything, and Henry is her only family, not Gold (never Gold) and she needs to know that no matter what he does when he goes out on business, he'll come home safe.

There's the faintest touch of a fingertip to her neck that makes her shiver, and the stiff, reassuring press of his prosthetic to her hip while his breath is warm in her ear.

"Aye. No harm will come to him, I promise."

Strangely enough it helps her sleep that night, though she usually doesn't sleep much whenever Henry isn't home, and at one point Emma thinks she hears footsteps in the hall, turning over in her king-sized bed to blink at the open door and the figure silhouetted there against the light. It's not Henry, and the hook is back, she came just make out the curve of it before Killian reaches out and closes the door, face shadowed and unreadable. There's the murmur of voices a moment later, and she closes her eyes again and knows he brought her son home.

The morning news reports a late-night robbery down at the docks, one dead, no suspects. The unfortunate deceased is Walsh Oz, who imported furniture from Asia and had reported ties to Zelena Mills, Cora Mills's other daughter who controls the west end. Emma switches the TV to another channel and pours more coffee for Henry and Killian, sitting side by side at the breakfast bar with an open box of donuts they brought back. Officially the Mills and Gold families have a truce right now, but _unofficially..._

Well.

Emma skips the trendy gastropubs and fusion restaurants for a dive bar down by the docks, where heads turn as she enters and immediately turn away. Everyone here knows who she is, but she's not Emma Swan, she's Henry's mother, Gold's daughter-in-law, and no one messes with the Gold family down by the docks so a table is cleared and a beer is brought within seconds.

"Hello, love."

Killian Jones stands with his thumb in his belt and his hook resting on his leg, a lazy smirk on his handsome face that Emma wants to wipe away between her thighs. She knows he has connections at the docks, knows Walsh Oz did too and it wasn't just furniture he was importing for Zelena Mills. But she didn't come to dig deeper, Henry is out on a date with Jacinda, he'll spend the night over at her place while Felix keeps watch from the car and the nice, empty house that Gold bought for her is not where Emma wants to be right now.

He tastes of rum, spicy and dark on her tongue when she thrusts it into his mouth and bites hard on his lip, making it redden as the blood rises to the surface. His hand is not soft like the men she usually picks up for a one night stand, it's callused and wonderfully rough against her skin when he practically throws her onto his bed and presses her thighs open. He trails a single fingertip through her slick cleft and makes her shiver, the metal of his hook cold on her bare hip. When he sits back to throw off his shirt Emma sees that his abs are hard as any gym rat's but unlike them his skin is dusted with scars that she recognizes from a lifetime of being a bystander to the Gold family business. There's the pale, healed wounds from a knife on his ribs and a jagged line on his shoulder, where a bullet probably dug a furrow as it grazed past, not to mention whatever happened to his hand. She doesn't ask, but their eyes meet and she knows it's not a birth defect or the result of an accident.

He knows that she knows.

He's not nice, but he's fucking _good,_ hard and demanding when he pushes inside and sets a furious pace that's exactly what she wants, back arching to meet his thrusts and tilting her hips to welcome him even deeper while he fucks her into the mattress, bed squeaking and their fingers laced together over her head. She buries her face in his neck and sinks her teeth into his shoulder, right along the groove of his bullet wound. He growls dangerously at that and it makes her even wetter, slicker, his voice whispering deliciously filthy things in her ear while she writhes underneath him. This time there's blood under her nails, drawn from raking them down his back cause she's not nice either, she's the girl who stole money to run away from foster care and survived on the streets, had her only son at fifteen and made a deal with Robert Gold to protect his birthright, no matter the cost. Her own hands are far from clean.

She never stays the night with her nameless hookups, but she knew his name before she stepped into the bar, his name and his street moniker, _Captain Hook_ , just as he knew exactly who she is, not just Emma Swan, but Henry's mother, Gold's daughter-in-law and what being with her really means.

Henry doesn't object to his new stepfather, both giving her away and serving as the best man at the small wedding held at Saint Cecilia's. Gold does object, his cold eyes showing his displeasure when Emma visits him at his large mansion just outside the city to tell him the news. But she's not a teenager anymore (although she strongly suspects his newest mistress Belle still is, he's just like his son, the prick) and she informs him tartly that she's only come as a courtesy to her son's grandfather, not to ask permission.

"I do not want that man to join this family."

"Well, you're too late for that. Henry brought him in, he's part of _my_ family now."

Gold and Belle don't attend but they do send a gift, and surprisingly so does Regina Mills, a silver platter that makes Emma go pale when she unwraps it. Killian takes one look and then he sweeps it away, going into the other room with Henry and talking to her son in low, urgent tones while Emma feels something cold and dark wrap around her heart.

When he slips into bed with her after coming back from doing God knows what the chill has spread even as his warm body envelops her from behind. Regina's "gift" was a clear threat to her family, a family that now includes Killian Jones.

"You'll watch your back?"

His thumb traces warm circles on her bare hip. "Aye love. You don't have to worry about me, I'm a survivor."

They fuck with her on top, hands spread flat on his chest to feel the race of his heart, leaping against her palm while his cock pulses and jerks inside of her as his climax hits and she knows that she's still young enough to have another child, one Gold can't take from her. But not yet, not until Killian and Henry take care of more unpleasant business first.

Emma lies awake in the dark long after Killian falls asleep.

The wedding gift is the opening shot the breaks the uneasy truce in the decades-long war between the Mills and Gold families. Regina and Zelena move to take over the docks and Killian blocks them both, one of Gold's bodyguards, Little John, turns out to be a Mills spy and his mutilated body is wrapped in heavy chains and thrown into the harbour to dispose of it, while the info he revealed under torture is used to finally break the Sherwood gang, one of Regina's top earners on the South Side and a longstanding thorn in Gold's side. She gets her revenge though, in the form of poison that takes Gold out for good and puts Henry in a coma.

Killian is the one who breaks the news to Emma.

Killian is the one who holds her when she cries.

Killian is the one who finds the safe house where Regina is hiding out, in a little storybook town up in Maine.

Killian is not the one who pulls the trigger.

 _"I always knew there was a little gangster in you, Swan."_

They bury the body in the woods, ditch the stolen Beetle and go back to Boston, where Jacinda devotedly sits by Henry's bedside in the hospital and tearfully confesses to Emma that she's pregnant with his child. She smiles at her future daughter-in-law.

"Welcome to the family."

Gold is gone, but she knows her son will recover to take over his business, take his birthright and become the new head of Boston's underworld, the head of the _Swan_ family.

And Emma Swan-Jones knows she'll do anything to protect her family.


End file.
